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THROUGH THE GATES 


OF GOLD 


A FRAGMENT OF THOUGHT 


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MABEL (COLLINS) 





BOSTON 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 
1890 


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Copyright , 1887, 

By Roberts Brothers. 


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John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 


Chap. Page 

Prologue . 7 

I. The Search for Pleasure. 9 

II. The Mystery of Threshold.37 

III. The Initial Effort. 46 

IV. The Meaning of Pain. 64 

V. The Secret of Strength.87 

Epilogue .Ill 









I 


Once, as I sat alone writing , a mysterious Visitor 
entered my study, wiannounced, and stood beside me, 
I forgot to ask who he was or why he entered so un¬ 
ceremoniously, for he began to tell me of the Gates of 
Gold. He spoke fro?n knowledge, and from the fire 

of his speech I caught faith. I have written down his 

% 

words ; but, alas, I cannot hope that the fire shall burn 
so brightly in my writing as in his speech . 

M. C, 




THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD: 


A FRAGMENT OF THOUGHT. 


PROLOGUE. 

Every man has a philosophy of life 
of his own, except the true philosopher. 
The most ignorant boor has some concep¬ 
tion of his object in living, and definite 
ideas as to the easiest and wisest way of 
attaining that object. The man of the 
world is often, unconsciously to himself, 
a philosopher of the first rank. He deals 
with his life on principles of the clearest 
character, and refuses to let his position be 
shattered by chance disaster. The man of 
thought and imagination has less certainty, 
and finds himself continually unable to for¬ 
mulate his ideas on that subject most pro¬ 
foundly interesting to human nature, — 
human life itself. The true philosopher is 



8 


PEOLOGUE. 


the one who would lay no claim to the 
name whatever, who has discovered that 
the mystery of life is unapproachable by 
ordinary thought, just as the true scientist 
confesses his complete ignorance of the 
principles which lie behind science. 

Whether there is any mode of thought 
or any effort of the mind which will en¬ 
able a man to grasp the great principles 
that evidently exist as causes in human life, 
is a question no ordinary thinker can de¬ 
termine. Yet the dim consciousness that 
there is cause behind the effects we see, 
that there is order ruling the chaos and 
sublime harmony pervading the discords, 
haunts the eager souls of the earth, and 
makes them long for vision of the unseen 
and knowledge of the unknowable. 

Why long and look for that which is 
beyond all hope until the inner eyes are 
opened ? Why not piece together the frag¬ 
ments that we have at hand, and see 
whether from them some shape cannot be 
given to the vast puzzle ? 


CHAPTER I. 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 

V I. 

We are all acquainted with that stern 
thing called misery, which pursues man, 
and strangely enough, as it seems at first, 
pursues him with no vague or uncertain 
method, but with a positive and unbroken 
pertinacity. Its presence is not absolutely 
continuous, else man must cease to live ; 
but its pertinacity is without any break. 
There is always the shadowy form of de¬ 
spair standing behind man ready to touch 
him with its terrible finger if for too long 
he finds himself content. What has given 
this ghastly shape the right to haunt us 
from the hour we are born until the hour 
we die ? What has given it the right to 
stand always at our door, keeping that 
door ajar with its impalpable yet plainly 


10 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

horrible hand, ready to enter at the mo¬ 
ment it sees fit ? The greatest philosopher 
that ever lived succumbs before it at last; 
and he only is a philosopher, in any sane 
sense, who recognizes the fact that it is 
irresistible, and knows that like all other 
men he must suffer soon or late. It is part 
of the heritage of men, this pain and dis¬ 
tress ; and he who determines that nothing 
shall make him suffer, does but cloak him¬ 
self in a profound and chilly selfishness. 
This cloak may protect him from pain ; it 
will also separate him from pleasure. If 
peace is to be found on earth, or any joy 
in life, it cannot be by closing up the 
gates of feeling, which admit us to the 
loftiest and most vivid part of our exist¬ 
ence. Sensation, as w r e obtain it through 
the physical body, affords us all that in¬ 
duces us to live in that shape. It is incon¬ 
ceivable that any man would care to take 
the trouble of breathing, unless the act 
brought with it a sense of satisfaction. So 
it is with every deed of every instant of 
our life. We live because it is pleasant 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 11 

even to have the sensation of pain. It is 
sensation we desire, else we would with one 
accord taste of the deep waters of oblivion, 
and the human race would become extinct. 
If this is the case in the physical life, it is 
evidently the case with the life of the emo¬ 
tions, — the imagination, the sensibilities, 
all those fine and delicate formations which, 
with the marvellous recording mechanism 
of the brain, make up the inner or subtile 
man. Sensation is that which makes their 
pleasure ; an infinite series of sensations is 
life to them. Destroy the sensation which 
makes them wish to persevere in the ex¬ 
periment of living, and there is nothing left. 
Therefore the man who attempts to oblit¬ 
erate the sense of pain, and who proposes 
to maintain an equal state whether he is 
pleased or hurt, strikes at the very root of 
life, and destroys the object of his own ex¬ 
istence. And that must apply, so far as 
our present reasoning or intuitive powers 
can show us, to every state, even to that 
of the Oriental’s longed-for Nirvana. This 
condition can only be one of infinitely 


12 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

subtiler and more exquisite sensation, if it 
is a state at all, and not annihilation ; and 
according to the experience of life from 
which we are at present able to judge, 
increased subtility of sensation means in¬ 
creased vividness, — as, for instance, a man 
of sensibility and imagination feels more 
in consequence of the unfaithfulness or 
faithfulness of a friend than can a man 
of even the grossest physical nature feel 
through the medium of the senses. Thus 
it is clear that the philosopher who re¬ 
fuses to feel, leaves himself no place to 
retreat to, not even the distant and unat¬ 
tainable NirVanic goal. He can only deny 
himself his heritage of life, which is in other 
words the right of sensation. If he chooses 
to sacrifice that which makes him man, he 
must be content with mere idleness of con¬ 
sciousness, — a condition compared to which 
the oyster’s is a life of excitement. 

But no man is able to accomplish such 
a feat. The fact of his continued existence 
proves plainly that he still desires sensa¬ 
tion, and desires it in such positive and 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


13 


active form that the desire must be grati¬ 
fied in physical life. It would seem more 
practical not to deceive one’s self by the 
sham of stoicism, not to attempt renuncia¬ 
tion of that with which nothing would in¬ 
duce one to part. Would it not be a 
bolder policy, a more promising mode of 
solving the great enigma of existence, to 
grasp it, to take hold firmly and to demand 
of it the mystery of itself? If men will 
but pause and consider what lessons they 
have learned from pleasure and pain, much 
might be guessed of that strange thing 
which causes these effects. But men are 
prone to turn away hastily from self-study, 
or from any close analysis of human nature. 
Yet there must be a science of life as in¬ 
telligible as any of the methods of the 
schools. The science is unknown, it is 
true, and its existence is merely guessed, 
merely hinted at, by one or two of our 
more advanced thinkers. The develop¬ 
ment of a science is only the discovery of 
what is already in existence; and chem¬ 
istry is as magical and incredible now to 


14 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the ploughboy as the science of life is to 
the man of ordinary perceptions. Yet there 
may be, and there must be, a seer who per¬ 
ceives the growth of the new knowledge as 
the earliest dabblers in the experiments of 
the laboratory saw the system of knowledge 
now attained evolving itself out of nature 
for man’s use and benefit. 

II. 

Doubtless many more would experiment 
in suicide, as many now do, in order to es¬ 
cape from the burden of life, if they could 
be convinced that in that manner oblivion 
might be found. But he who hesitates be¬ 
fore drinking the poison from the fear of 
only inviting change of mode of existence, 
and perhaps a more active form of misery, 
is a man of more knowledge than the rash 
souls who fling themselves wildly on the 
unknown, trusting to its kindliness. The 
waters of oblivion are something very dif¬ 
ferent from the waters of death, and the 
human race cannot become extinct by 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 15 

means of death while the law of birth still 
operates. Man returns to physical life as 
the drunkard returns to the flagon of wine, 
— he knows not why, except that he de¬ 
sires the sensation produced by life as the 
drunkard desires the sensation produced 
by wine. The true waters of oblivion lie 
far behind our consciousness, and can only 
be reached by ceasing to exist in that 
consciousness, — by ceasing to exert the 
will which makes us full of senses and 
sensibilities. 

Why does not the creature man return 
into that great womb of silence whence 
he came, and remain in peace, as the un¬ 
born child is at peace before the impetus 
of life has reached it ? He does not do so 
because he hungers for pleasure and pain, 
joy and grief, anger and love. The unfor¬ 
tunate man will maintain that he has no 
desire for life; and yet he proves his words 
false by living. None can compel him to 
live ; the galley-slave may be chained to 
his oar, but his life cannot be chained 
to his body. The superb mechanism of 


16 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the human body is as useless as an engine 
whose fires are not lit, if the will to live 
ceases, — that will which we maintain reso¬ 
lutely and without pause, and which en¬ 
ables us to perform the tasks which other¬ 
wise would fill us with dismay, as, for 
instance, the momently drawing in and 
giving out of the breath. Such herculean 
efforts as this we carry on without com¬ 
plaint, and indeed with pleasure, in order 
that we may exist in the midst of innumer¬ 
able sensations. 

And more; we are content, for the most 
part, to go on without object or aim, with¬ 
out any idea of a goal or understanding of 
which way we are going. When the man 
first becomes aware of this aimlessness, and 
is dimly conscious that he is working with 
great and constant efforts, and withoutjpiy 
idea towards what end those efforts are 
directed, then descends on him the misery 
of nineteenth-century thought. He is lost 
and bewildered, and without hope. He 
becomes sceptical, disillusioned, weary, and 
asks the apparently unanswerable question 


TIIE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


17 


whether it is indeed worth while to draw 
his breath for such unknown and seemingly 
unknowable results. But are these results 
unknowable ? At least, to ask a lesser 
question, is it impossible to make a guess 
as to the direction in which our goal lies ? 


III. 

This question, born of sadness and weari¬ 
ness, which seems to us essentially part of 
the spirit of the nineteenth century, is in 
fact a question which must have been asked 
all through the ages. Could we go back 
throughout history intelligently, no doubt 
we should find that it came always with 
the hour when the flower of civilization had 
blown to its full, and when its petals were 
but slackly held together. The natural 
part of man has reached then its utmost 
height; he has rolled the stone up the 
Hill of Difficulty only to watch it roll back 
again when the summit is reached, — as 
in Egypt, in Rome, in Greece. Why this 
useless labor? Is it not enough to produce 


18 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

a weariness and sickness unutterable, to be 
forever accomplishing a task only to see it 
undone again ? Yet that is what man has 
done throughout history, so far as our 
limited knowledge reaches. There is one 
summit to which, by immense and united 
efforts, he attains, where there is a great 
and brilliant efflorescence of all the intel¬ 
lectual, mental, and material part of his 
nature. The climax of sensuous perfection 
is reached, and then his hold weakens, his 
power grows less, and he falls back, thiough 
despondency and satiety, to barbarism. 
Why does he not stay on this hill-top he 
has reached, and look away to the moun¬ 
tains beyond, and resolve to scale those 
greater heights ? Because he is ignorant, 
and seeing a great glittering in the dis¬ 
tance, drops his eyes bewildered and daz¬ 
zled, and goes back for rest to the shadowy 
side of his familiar hill. Yet there is now 
and then one brave enough to gaze fixedly 
on this glittering, and to decipher some¬ 
thing of the shape within it. Poets and 
philosophers, thinkers and teachers, all 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


19 


those who are the “ elder brothers of the 
race,” — have beheld this sight from time 
to time, and some among them have recog¬ 
nized in the bewildering glitter the outlines 
of the Gates of Gold. 

Those Gates admit us to the sanctuary of 
man’s own nature, to the place whence his 
life-power comes, and where he is priest of 
the shrine of life. That it is possible to 
enter here, to pass through those Gates, 
some one or two have shown us. Plato, 
Shakspeare, and a few other strong ones 
have gone through and spoken to us in 
veiled language on the near side of the 
Gates. When the strong man has crossed 
the threshold he speaks no more to those 
at the other side. And even the words he 
utters when he is outside are so full of 
mystery, so veiled and profound, that only 
those who follow in his steps can see the 
light within them. 


IV. 

What men desire is to ascertain how to 
exchange pain for pleasure; that is, to 


20 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 


find out in what way consciousness may be 
regulated in order that the sensation which 
is most agreeable is the one that is experi¬ 
enced. Whether this can be discovered by 
dint of human thought is at least a question 
worth considering. 

If the mind of man is turned upon any 
given subject with a sufficient concentra¬ 
tion, he obtains illumination with regard to 
it sooner or later. The particular individual 
in whom the final illumination appears is 
called a genius, an inventor, one inspired ; 
but he is only the crown of a great mental 
work created by unknown men about him, 
and receding back from him through long 
vistas of distance. Without them he would 
not have had his material to deal with. 
Even the poet requires innumerable poet¬ 
asters to feed upon. He is the essence of 
the poetic power of his time, and of the 
times before him. It is impossible to sepa¬ 
rate an individual of any species from his 
kin. 

If, therefore, instead of accepting the un¬ 
known as unknowable, men were with one 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


21 


accord to turn their thoughts towards it, 
those Golden Gates would not remain so 
inexorably shut. It does but need a strong 
hand to push them open. The courage to 
enter them is the courage to search the 
recesses of one’s own nature without fear 
and without shame. In the fine part, the 
essence, the flavor of the man, is found the 
key which unlocks those great Gates. And 
when they open, what is it that is found ? 

Voices here and there in the long silence 
of the ages speak to answer that question. 
Those who have passed through have left 
words behind them as legacies to others of 
their kin. In these words we can find defi¬ 
nite indications of what is to be looked for 
beyond the Gates. But only those who 
desire to go that way read the meaning 
hidden within the words. Scholars, or 
rather scholiasts, read the sacred books of 
different nations, the poetry and the phi¬ 
losophy left by enlightened minds, and find 
in it all the merest materiality. Imagina¬ 
tion glorifying legends of nature, or exag¬ 
gerating the psychic possibilities of man, 


22 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

explains to them all that they find in the 
Bibles of humanity. 

What is to be found within the words of 
those books is to be found in each one of 
us; and it is impossible to find in literature 
or through any channel of thought that 
which does not exist in the man who studies. 
This is of course an evident fact known to 
all real students. But it has to be especially 
remembered in reference to this profound 
and obscure subject, as men so readily 
believe that nothing can exist for others 
where they themselves find emptiness. 

One thing is soon perceived by the man 
who reads: those who have gone before 
have not found that the Gates of Gold lead 
to oblivion. On the contrary, sensation 
becomes real for the first time when that 
threshold is crossed. But it is of a new 
order, an order unknown to us now, and 
by us impossible to appreciate without at 
least some clew as to its character. This 
clew can be obtained undoubtedly by any 
student who cares to go through all the lit¬ 
erature accessible to us. That mystic books 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 23 

and manuscripts exist, but remain inacces¬ 
sible simply because there is no man ready 
to read the first page of any one of them, 
becomes the conviction of all who have 
studied the subject sufficiently. For there 
must be the continuous line all through: 
we see it go from dense ignorance up to 
intelligence and wisdom; it is only natural 
that it should go on to intuitive knowledge 
and to inspiration. Some scant fragments 
we have of these great gifts of man; where, 
then, is the whole of which they must be a 
part ? Hidden behind the thin yet seem¬ 
ingly impassable veil which hides it from 
us as it hid all science, all art, all powers 
of man till he had the courage to tear away 
the screen. That courage comes only of 
conviction. When once man believes that 
the thing exists which he desires, he will 
obtain it at any cost. The difficulty in this 
case lies in man’s incredulity. It requires 
a great tide of thought and attention to set 
in towards the unknown region of man’s 
nature in order that its gates may be un¬ 
locked and its glorious vistas explored. 


24 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

That it is worth while to do this what¬ 
ever the hazard may be, all must allow who 
have asked the sad question of the nine¬ 
teenth century, — Is life worth living ? 
Surely it is sufficient to spur man to new 
effort, — the suspicion that beyond civiliza¬ 
tion, beyond mental culture, beyond art 
and mechanical perfection, there is a new, 
another gateway, admitting to the realities 
of life. 


Y. 

When it seems as if the end was reached, 
the goal attained, and that man has no 
more to do, — just then, when he appears 
to have no choice but between eating and 
drinking and living in his comfort as the 
beasts do in theirs, and scepticism which 
is death, — then it is that in fact, if he will 
but look, the Golden Gates are before him. 
With the culture of the age within him and 
assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself 
an incarnation of it, then he is fit to attempt 
the great step which is absolutely possible, 
yet is attempted by so few even of those 


TIIE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


25 


who are fitted for it. It is so seldom 
attempted, partly because of the profound 
difficulties which surround it, but much 
more because man does not realize that this 
is actually the direction in which pleasure 
and satisfaction are to be obtained. 

There are certain pleasures which appeal 
to each individual; every man knows that 
in one layer or another of sensation he 
finds his chief delight. Naturally he turns 
to this systematically through life, just as 
the sunflower turns to the sun and the 
water-lily leans on the water. But he 
struggles throughout with an awful fact 
which oppresses him to the soul, — that no 
sooner has he obtained his pleasure than he 
loses it again and has once more to go in 
search of it. More than that; he never 
actually reaches it, for it eludes him at the 
final moment. This is because he endeav¬ 
ors to seize that which is untouchable and 
satisfy his soul’s hunger for sensation by 
contact with external objects. How can 
that which is external satisfy or even please 
the inner man, — the thing which reigns 


26 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

within and has no eyes for matter, no hands 
for touch of objects, no senses with which 
to apprehend that which is outside its magic 
walls ? Those charmed barriers which sur¬ 
round it are limitless, for it is everywhere ; 
it is to be discovered in all living things, 
and no part of the universe can be con¬ 
ceived of without it, if that universe is re¬ 
garded as a coherent whole. And unless 
that point is granted at the outset it is 
useless to consider the subject of life at all. 
Life is indeed meaningless unless it is uni¬ 
versal and coherent, and unless we maintain 
our existence by reason of the fact that we 
are part of that which is, not by reason of 
our own being. 

This is one of the most important factors 
in the development of man, the recognition — 
profound and complete recognition — of the 
law of universal unity and coherence. The 
separation which exists between individuals, 
between worlds, between the different poles 
of the universe and of life, the mental and 
physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare 
of the human imagination. That night- 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 27 

mares exist, and exist only to torment, 
every child knows; and what we need is 
the power of discrimination between the 
phantasmagoria of the brain, which concern 
ourselves only, and the phantasmagoria of 
daily life, in which others also are concerned. 
This rule applies also to the larger case. It 
concerns no one but ourselves that we live 
in a nightmare of unreal horror, and fancy 
ourselves alone in the universe and capable 
of independent action, so long as our asso¬ 
ciates are those only who are a part of the 
dream; but when we desire to speak with 
those who have tried the Golden Gates and 
pushed them open, then it is very necessary 
— in fact it is essential — to discriminate, 
and not bring into our life the confusions 
of our sleep. If we do, we are reckoned 
as madmen, and fall back into the darkness 
where there is no friend but chaos. This 
chaos has followed every effort of man that 
is written in history; after civilization has 
flowered, the flower falls and dies, and win¬ 
ter and darkness destroy it. While man 
refuses to make the effort of discrimination 


28 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

which would enable him to distinguish 
between the shapes of night and the 
active figures of day, this must inevitably 
happen. 

But if man has the courage to resist this 
reactionary tendency, to stand steadily on 
the height he has reached and put out his 
foot in search of yet another step, why 
should he not find it? There is nothing 
to make one suppose the pathway to end 
at a certain point, except that tradition 
which has declared it is so, and which men 
have accepted and hug to themselves as a 
justification for their indolence. 

YI. 

Indolence is, in fact, the curse of man. 
As the Irish peasant and the cosmopolitan 
gypsy dwell in dirt and poverty out of sheer 
idleness, so does the man of the world live 
contented in sensuous pleasures for the 
same reason. The drinking of fine wines, 
the tasting of delicate food, the love of 
bright sights and sounds, of beautiful 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 


29 


women and admirable surroundings, — these 
are no better for the cultivated man, no 
more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoy¬ 
ment for him, than the coarse amusements 
and gratifications of the boor are for the 
man without cultivation. There can be no 
final point, for life in every form is one 
vast series of fine gradations; and the man 
who elects to stand still at the point of 
culture he has reached, and to avow that 
he can go no further, is simply making an 
arbitrary statement for the excuse of his 
indolence. Of course there is a possibility 
of declaring that the gypsy is content in his 
dirt and poverty, and, because he is so, is 
as great a man as the most highly cultured. 
But he only is so while he is ignorant; the 
moment light enters the dim mind the 
whole man turns towards it. So it is on 
the higher platform; only the difficulty 
of penetrating the mind, of admitting the 
light, is even greater. The Irish peasant 
loves his whiskey, and while he can have 
it cares nothing for the great laws of 
morality and religion which are supposed 


30 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

to govern humanity and induce men to 
live temperately. The cultivated gour¬ 
mand cares only for subtle tastes and per¬ 
fect flavors; but he is as blind as the 
merest peasant to the fact that there is 
anything beyond such gratifications. Like 
the boor he is deluded by a mirage that 
oppresses his soul; and he fancies, having 
once obtained a sensuous joy that pleases 
him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction 
by endless repetition, till at last he reaches 
madness. The bouquet of the wine he 
loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving 
him with no thoughts but those of sensuous 
desire; and he is in the same hopeless 
state as the man who dies mad with drink. 
What good has the drunkard obtained by 
his madness? None; pain has at last swal¬ 
lowed up pleasure utterly, and death steps 
in to terminate the agony. The man suf¬ 
fers the final penalty for his persistent ig¬ 
norance of a law of nature as inexorable as 
that of gravitation, — a law which forbids a 
man to stand still. Not twice can the same 
cup of pleasure be tasted; the second time 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 31 

it must contain either a grain of poison or 
a drop of the elixir of life. 

The same argument holds good with re¬ 
gard to intellectual pleasures; the same law 
operates. We see men who are the flower 
of their age in intellect, who pass beyond 
their fellows and tower over them, entering 
at last upon a fatal treadmill of thought, 
where they yield to the innate indolence 
of the soul and begin to delude themselves 
by the solace of repetition. Then comes 
the barrenness and lack of vitality, — that 
unhappy and disappointing state into which 
great men too often enter when middle life 
is just passed. The fire of youth, the vigor 
of the young intellect, conquers the inner 
inertia and makes the man scale heights 
of thought and fill his mental lungs with 
the free air of the mountains. But then 
at last the physical reaction sets in ; the 
physical machinery of the brain loses its 
powerful impetus and begins to relax its 
efforts, simply because the youth of the 
body is at an end. Now the man is as¬ 
sailed by the great tempter of the race 


32 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

who stands forever on the ladder of life 
waiting for those who climb so far. He 
drops the poisoned drop into the ear, and 
from that moment all consciousness takes 
on a dulness, and the man becomes terri¬ 
fied lest life is losing its possibilities for 
him. He rushes back on to a familiar 
platform of experience, and there finds 
comfort in touching a well-known chord of 
passion or emotion. And too many having 
done this linger on, afraid to attempt the 
unknown, and satisfied to touch continually 
that chord which responds most readily. 
By this means they get the assurance that 
life is still burning within them. But at 
last their fate is the same as that of the 
gourmand and the drunkard. The power 
of the spell lessens daily as the machinery 
which feels loses its vitality; and the man 
endeavors to revive the old excitement and 
fervor by striking the note more violently, 
by hugging the thing that makes him feel, 
by drinking the cup of poison to its fatal 
dregs. And then he is lost; madness falls 
on his soul, as it falls on the body of the 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE. 33 

drunkard. Life has no longer any mean¬ 
ing for him, and he rushes wildly into the 
abysses of intellectual insanity. A lesser 
man who commits this great folly wearies 
the spirits of others by a dull clinging to 
familiar thought, by a persistent hugging 
of the treadmill which he asserts to be the 
final goal. The cloud that surrounds him 
is as fatal as death itself, and men who once 
sat at his feet turn away grieved, and have 
to look back at his early words in order to 
remember his greatness. 

VII. 

What is the cure for this misery and 
waste of effort ? Is there one ? Surely 
life itself has a logic in it and a law which 
makes existence possible; otherwise chaos 
and madness would be the only state which 
would be attainable. 

When a man drinks his first cup of pleas¬ 
ure his soul is filled with the unutterable 
joy that comes with a first, a fresh sen¬ 
sation. The drop of poison that he puts 
3 


34 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

into the second cup, and which, if he per¬ 
sists in that folly, has to become doubled 
and trebled till at last the whole cup is poi¬ 
son,— that is the ignorant desire for rep¬ 
etition and intensification; this evidently 
means death, according to all analogy. 
The child becomes the man; he cannot re¬ 
tain his childhood and repeat and intensify 
the pleasures of childhood except by pay¬ 
ing the inevitable price and becoming an 
idiot. The plant strikes its roots into the 
ground and throws up green leaves; then 
it blossoms and bears fruit. That plant 
which will only make roots or leaves, paus¬ 
ing persistently in its development, is re¬ 
garded by the gardener as a thing which is 
useless and must be cast out. 

The man who chooses the way of effort, 
and refuses to allow the sleep of indolence 
to dull his soul, finds in his pleasures a new 
and finer joy each time he tastes them,— 
a something subtile and remote which re¬ 
moves them more and more from the state 
in which mere sensuousness is all; this sub¬ 
tile essence is that elixir of life which makes 


THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE, 35 

man immortal. He who tastes it and who 
will not drink unless it is in the cup finds 
life enlarge and the world grow great be¬ 
fore his eager eyes. He recognizes the 
soul within the woman he loves, and pas¬ 
sion becomes peace; he sees within his 
thought the finer qualities of spiritual truth, 
which is beyond the action of our mental 
machinery, and then instead of entering on 
the treadmill of intellectualisms he rests 
on the broad back of the eagle of intuition 
and soars into the fine air where the great 
poets found their insight; he sees within 
his own power of sensation, of pleasure in 
fresh air and sunshine, in food and wine, 
in motion and rest, the possibilities of the 
subtile man, the thing which dies not either 
with the body or the brain. The pleasures 
of art, of music, of light and loveliness, — 
within these forms, which men repeat till 
they find only the forms, he sees the glory 
of the Gates of Gold, and passes through to 
find the new life beyond which intoxicates 
and strengthens, as the keen mountain air 
intoxicates and strengthens, by its very 


36 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

vigor. But if he has been pouring, drop 
by drop, more and more of the elixir of life 
into his cup, he is strong enough to breathe 
this intense air and to live upon it. Then if 
he die or if he live in physical form, alike he 
goes on and finds new and finer joys, more 
perfect and satisfying experiences, with 
every breath he draws in and gives out. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD. 

I. 

There is no doubt that at the entrance 
on a new phase of life something has to be 
given up. The child, when it has become 
the man, puts away childish things. Saint 
Paul showed in these words, and in many 
others which he has left us, that he had 
tasted of the elixir of life, that he was on his 
way towards the Gates of Gold. With each 
drop of the divine draught which is put into 
the cup of pleasure something is purged 
away from that cup to make room for the 
magic drop. For Nature deals with her chil¬ 
dren generously: man’s cup is always full 
to the brim ; and if he chooses to taste of 
the fine and life-giving essence, he must cast 
away something of the grosser and less 
sensitive part of himself. This has to be 


38 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

done daily, hourly, momently, in order that 
the draught of life may steadily increase. 
And to do this unflinchingly, a man must be 
his own schoolmaster, must recognize that 
he is always in need of wisdom, must be 
ready to practise any austerities, to use the 
birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in 
order to gain his end. It becomes evident 
to any one who regards the subject se¬ 
riously, that only a man who has the poten¬ 
tialities in him both of the voluptuary and 
the stoic has any chance of entering the 
Golden Gates. He must be capable of test¬ 
ing and valuing to its most delicate fraction 
every joy existence has to give; and he 
must be capable of denying himself all 
pleasure, and that without suffering from 
the denial. When he has accomplished the 
development of this double possibility, then 
he is able to begin sifting his pleasures and 
taking away from his consciousness those 
which belong absolutely to the man of clay. 
When those are put back, there is the 
next range of more refined pleasures to be 
dealt with. The dealing with these which 


THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD. 39 

will enable a man to find the essence of 
life is not the method pursued by the stoic 
philosopher. The stoic does not allow that 
there is joy within pleasure, and by deny¬ 
ing himself the one loses the other. But 
the true philosopher, who has studied life 
itself without being bound by any system 
of thought, sees that the kernel is within 
the shell, and that, instead of crunching up 
the whole nut like a gross and indifferent 
feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained 
by cracking the shell and casting it away. 
All emotion, all sensation, lends itself to 
this process, else it could not be a part of 
man's development, an essential of his na¬ 
ture. For that there is before him power, 
life, perfection, and that every portion of 
his passage thitherwards is crowded with 
the means of helping him to his goal, can 
only be denied by those who refuse to ac¬ 
knowledge life as apart from matter. Their 
mental position is so absolutely arbitrary 
that it is useless to encounter or combat 
it. Through all time the unseen has been 
pressing on the seen, the immaterial over- 


40 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

powering the material; through all time 
the signs and tokens of that which is be¬ 
yond matter have been waiting for the men 
of matter to test and weigh them. Those 
who will not do so have chosen the place 
of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing 
to be done but let them remain there un¬ 
disturbed, working that treadmill which 
they believe to be the utmost activity of 
existence. 

II. 

There is no doubt that a man must edu¬ 
cate himself to perceive that which is 
beyond matter, just as he must educate 
himself to perceive that which is in matter. 
Every one knows that the early life of a 
child is one long process of adjustment, of 
learning to understand the use of the senses 
with regard to their special provinces, and of 
practice in the exercise of difficult, complex, 
yet imperfect organs entirely in reference 
to the perception of the world of matter. 
The child is in earnest and works on with¬ 
out hesitation if he means to live. Some 


THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD. 41 

infants born into the light of earth shrink 
from it, and refuse to attack the immense 
task which is before them, and which must 
be accomplished in order to make life in 
matter possible. These go back to the 
ranks of the unborn; we see them lay 
down their manifold instrument, the body, 
and fade into sleep. So it is with the great 
crowd of humanity when it has triumphed 
and conquered and enjoyed in the world 
of matter. The individuals in that crowd, 
which seems so powerful and confident in 
its familiar demesne, are infants in the 
presence of the immaterial universe. And 
we see them, on all sides, daily and hourly, 
refusing to enter it, sinking back into the 
ranks of the dwellers in physical life, cling¬ 
ing to the consciousnesses they have expe¬ 
rienced and understand. The intellectual 
rejection of all purely spiritual knowledge 
is the most marked indication of this indo¬ 
lence, of which thinkers of every standing 
are certainly guilty. 

That the initial effort is a heavy one is 
evident, and it is clearly a question of 


42 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

strength, as well as of willing activity. 
But there is no way of acquiring this 
strength, or of using it when acquired, ex¬ 
cept by the exercise of the will. It is vain 
to expect to be born into great possessions. 
In the kingdom of life there is no heredity 
except from the man’s own past. He has 
to accumulate that which is his. This is 
evident to any observer of life who uses his 
eyes without blinding them by prejudice; 
and even when prejudice is present, it is 
impossible for a man of sense not to per¬ 
ceive the fact. It is from this that we get 
the doctrine of punishment and salvation, 
either lasting through great ages after 
death, or eternal. This doctrine is a nar¬ 
row and unintelligent mode of stating the 
fact in Nature that what a man sows that 
shall he reap. Swedenborg’s great mind 
saw the fact so clearly that he hardened it 
into a finality in reference to this particular 
existence, his prejudices making it impossi¬ 
ble for him to perceive the possibility of 
new action when there is no longer the 
sensuous world to act in. He was too dog- 


THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD. 43 

matic for scientific observation, and would 
not see that, as the spring follows the au¬ 
tumn, and the day the night, so birth 
must follow death. He went very near the 
threshold of the Gates of Gold, and passed 
beyond mere intellectualism, only to pause 
at a point but one step farther. The glimpse 
of the life beyond which he had obtained 
appeared to him to contain the universe; 
and on his fragment of experience he built 
lip a theory to include all life, and refused 
progress beyond that state or any possibil¬ 
ity outside it. This is only another form 
of the weary treadmill. But Swedenborg 
stands foremost in the crowd of witnesses 
to the fact that the Golden Gates exist and 
can be seen from the heights of thought, 
and he has cast us a faint surge of sensation 
from their threshold. 

III. 

When once one has considered the mean¬ 
ing of those Gates, it is evident that there 
is no other way out of this form of life 


44 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

except through them. They only can admit 
man to the place where he becomes the fruit 
of which manhood is the blossom. Nature 
is the kindest of mothers to those who need 
her; she never wearies of her children or 
desires them to lessen in multitude. Her 
friendly arms open wide to the vast throng 
who desire birth and to dwell in forms ; and 
while they continue to desire it, she contin¬ 
ues to smile a welcome. Why, then, should 
she shut her doors on any? When one life 
in her heart has not worn out a hundredth 
part of the soul’s longing for sensation such 
as it finds there, what reason can there 
be for its departure to any other place ? 
Surely the seeds of desire spring up where 
the sower has sown them. This seems but 
reasonable; and on this apparently self- 
evident fact the Indian mind has based its 
theory of re-incarnation, of birth and re¬ 
birth in matter, which has become so famil¬ 
iar a part of Eastern thought as no longer 
to need demonstration. The Indian knows 
it as the Western knows that the day he 
is living through is but one of many days 


THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD. 45 

which make up the span of a man’s life. 
This certainty which is possessed by the 
Eastern with regard to natural laws that 
control the great sweep of the soul’s exist¬ 
ence is simply acquired by habits of thought. 
The mind of many is fixed on subjects 
which in the West are considered unthink¬ 
able. Thus it is that the East has produced 
the great flowers of the spiritual growth of 
humanity. On the mental steps of a million 
men Buddha passed through the Gates of 
Gold; and because a great crowd pressed 
about the threshold he was able to leave 
behind him words which prove that those 
Gates will open. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 

I. 

It is very easily seen that there is no 
one point in a man’s life or experience 
where he is nearer the soul of things than 
at any other. That soul, the sublime es¬ 
sence, which fills the air with a burnished 
glow, is there, behind the Gates it colors 
with itself. But that there is no one 
pathway to it is immediately perceived 
from the fact that this soul must from its 
very nature be universal. The Gates of 
Gold do not admit to any special place; 
what they do is to open for egress from a 
special place. Man passes through them 
when he casts off his limitation. He may 
burst the shell that holds him in darkness, 
tear the veil that hides him from the eter¬ 
nal, at any point where it is easiest for him 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


47 


to do so ; and most often this point will 
be where he least expects to find it. Men 
go in search of escape with the help of their 
minds, and lay down arbitrary and limited 
laws as to how to attain the, to them, un¬ 
attainable. Many, indeed, have hoped to 
pass through by the way of religion, and in¬ 
stead they have formed a place of thought 
and feeling so marked and fixed that it 
seems as though long ages would be insuf¬ 
ficient to enable them to get out of the rut. 
Some have believed that by the aid of pure 
intellect a way was to be found; and to 
such men we owe the philosophy and meta¬ 
physics which have prevented the race from 
sinking into utter sensuousness. But the 
end of the man who endeavors to live by 
thought alone is that he dwells in fanta¬ 
sies, and insists on giving them to other 
men as substantial food. Great is our debt 
to the metaphysicians and transcendental- 
ists; but he who follows them to the bitter 
end, forgetting that the brain is only one 
organ of use, will find himself dwelling in 
a place where a dull wheel of argument 


48 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

seems to turn forever on its axis, yet goes 
nowhither and carries no burden. 

Virtue (or what seems to each man to be 
virtue, his own special standard of morality 
and purity) is held by those who practise it 
to be a way to heaven. Perhaps it is, to 
the heaven of the modern sybarite, the ethi¬ 
cal voluptuary. It is as easy to become a 
gourmand in pure living and high thinking 
as in the pleasures of taste or sight or 
sound. Gratification is the aim of the vir¬ 
tuous man as well as of the drunkard; even 
if his life be a miracle of abstinence and 
self-sacrifice, a moment’s thought shows 
that in pursuing this apparently heroic path 
he does but pursue pleasure. With him 
pleasure takes on a lovely form because 
his gratifications are those of a sweet sa¬ 
vor, and it pleases him to give gladness 
to others rather than to enjoy himself at 
their expense. But the pure life and high 
thoughts are no more finalities in them¬ 
selves than any other mode of enjoyment; 
and the man who endeavors to find content¬ 
ment in them must intensify his effort and 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


49 


continually repeat it, — all in vain. He is 
a green plant indeed, and the leaves are 
beautiful; but more is wanted than leaves. 
If he persists in his endeavor blindly, be¬ 
lieving that he has reached his goal when 
he has not even perceived it, then he finds 
himself in that dreary place where good is 
done perforce, and the deed of virtue is 
without the love that should shine through 
it. It is well for a man to lead a pure life, 
as it is well for him to have clean hands, — 
else he becomes repugnant. But virtue as 
we understand it now can no more have 
any special relation to the state beyond 
that to which we are limited than any other 
part of our constitution. Spirit is not a gas 
created by matter, and we cannot create 
our future by forcibly using one material 
agent and leaving out the rest. Spirit is 
the great life on which matter rests, as does 
the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; 
whenever we can break our limitations we 
find ourselves on that marvellous shore 
where Wordsworth once saw the gleam of 
the gold. When we enter there all the 
4 


50 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

present must disappear alike, — virtue and 
vice, thought and sense. That a man reaps 
what he has sown must of course be true 
also; he has no power to carry virtue, which 
is of the material life, with him; yet the 
aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter 
sacrifice than the odor of crime and cruelty. 
Yet it may be, however, that by the prac¬ 
tice of virtue he will fetter himself into one 
groove, one changeless fashion of life in 
matter, so firmly that it is impossible for 
the mind to conceive that death is a suffi¬ 
cient power to free him, and cast him upon 
the broad and glorious ocean,— a sufficient 
power to .undo for him the inexorable and 
heavy latch of the Golden Gate. And 
sometimes the man who has sinned so 
deeply that his whole nature is scarred and 
blackened by the fierce fire of selfish grati¬ 
fication is at last so utterly burned out and 
charred that from the very vigor of the 
passion light leaps forth. It would seem 
more possible for such a man at least to 
reach the threshold of the Gates than for 
the mere ascetic or philosopher. 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


51 


But it is little use to reach the threshold 
of the Gates without the power to pass 
through. And that is all that the sinner 
can hope to do by the dissolution of himself 
which comes from seeing his own soul. At 
least this appears to be so, inevitably be¬ 
cause his condition is negative. The man 
who lifts the latch of the Golden Gate 
must do so with his own strong hand, must 
be absolutely positive. This we can see 
by analogy. In everything else in life, in 
every new step or development, it is neces¬ 
sary for a man to exercise his most domi¬ 
nant will in order to obtain it fully. Indeed 
in many cases, though he has every ad¬ 
vantage and though he use his will to some 
extent, he will fail utterly of obtaining 
what he desires from lack of the final and 
unconquerable resolution. No education in 
the world will make a man an intellectual 
glory to his age, even if his powers are 
great; for unless he positively desires to 
seize the flower of perfection, he will be but 
a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient 
in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel 


52 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

of memory. And the man who has this 
positive quality in him will rise in spite of 
adverse circumstances, will recognize and 
seize upon the tide of thought which is his 
natural food, and will stand as a giant at 
last in the place he willed to reach. We 
see this practically every day in all walks 
of life. Wherefore it does not seem possi¬ 
ble that the man who has simply succeeded 
through the passions in wrecking the dog¬ 
matic and narrow part of his nature should 
pass through those great Gates. But as he 
is not blinded by prejudice, nor has fast¬ 
ened himself to any treadmill of thought, 
nor caught the wheel of his soul in any 
deep rut of life, it would seem that if 
once the positive will might be born within 
him, he could at some time not hopelessly 
far distant lift his hand to the latch. 

Undoubtedly it is the hardest task we 
have yet seen set us in life, that which we 
are now talking of, — to free a man of all 
prejudice, of all crystallized thought or feel¬ 
ing, of all limitations, yet develop within 
him the positive will. It seems too much 


TIIE INITIAL EFFORT. 


53 


of a miracle; for in ordinary life positive 
will is always associated with crystallized 
ideas. But many tilings which have ap¬ 
peared to be too much of a miracle for ac¬ 
complishment have yet been done, even in 
the narrow experience of life given to our 
present humanity. All the past shows us 
that difficulty is no excuse for dejection, 
much less for despair; else the world would 
have been without the many wonders of 
civilization. Let us consider the thing more 
seriously, therefore, having once used our 
minds to the idea that it is not impossible. 

The great initial difficulty is that of fast¬ 
ening the interest on that which is unseen. 
Yet this is done every day, and we have 
only to observe how it is done in order to 
guide our own conduct. Every inventor 
fastens his interest firmly on the unseen; 
and it entirely depends on the firmness of 
that attachment whether he is successful or 
whether he fails. The poet who looks on 
to his moment of creation as that for which 
he lives, sees that which is invisible and 
hears that which is soundless. 


54 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD, 

Probably in this last analogy there is 
a clew as to the mode by which success 
in this voyage to the unknown bourn 
(“ whence,” indeed, “no traveller returns”) 
is attained. It applies also to the inven¬ 
tor and to all who reach out beyond the 
ordinary mental and psychical level of 
humanity. The clew lies in that word 
“ creation.” 


II. 

The words “ to create ” are often under¬ 
stood by the ordinary mind to convey the 
idea of evolving something out of nothing. 
This is clearly not its meaning ; we are 
mentally obliged to provide our Creator 
with chaos from which to produce the 
worlds. The tiller of the soil, who is the 
typical producer of social life, must have 
his material, his earth, his sky, rain, and 
sun, and the seeds to place within the 
earth. Out of nothing he can produce 
nothing. Out of a void Nature cannot 
arise ; there is that material beyond, be- 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


55 


hind, or within, from which she is shaped 
by our desire for a universe. It is an evi¬ 
dent fact that the seeds and the earth, air, 
and water which cause them to germinate 
exist on every plane of action. If you talk 
to an inventor, you will find that far ahead 
of what he is now doing he can always per¬ 
ceive some other thing to be done which 
he cannot express in words because as yet 
he has not drawn it into our present world 
of objects. That knowledge of the unseen 
is even more definite in the poet, and more 
inexpressible until he has touched it with 
some part of that consciousness which he 
shares with other men. But in strict pro¬ 
portion to his greatness he lives in the 
consciousness which the ordinary man does 
not even believe can exist, the conscious¬ 
ness which dwells in the greater universe, 
which breathes in the vaster air, which be¬ 
holds a wider earth and sky, and snatches 
seeds from plants of giant growth. 

It is this place of consciousness that we 
need to reach out to. That it is not re¬ 
served only for men of genius is shown 


56 THKOUGn THE GATES OF GOLD. 

by the fact that martyrs and heroes have 
found it and dwelt in it. It is not re¬ 
served for men of genius only, but it can 
only be found by men of great soul. 

In this fact there is no need for discour¬ 
agement. Greatness in man is popularly 
supposed to be a thing inborn. This belief 
must be a result of want of thought, of 
blindness to facts of nature. Greatness can 
only be attained by growth ; that is continu¬ 
ally demonstrated to us. Even the moun¬ 
tains, even the firm globe itself, these are 
great by dint of the mode of growth peculiar 
to that state of materiality, — accumulation 
of atoms. As the consciousness inherent in 
all existing forms passes into more ad¬ 
vanced forms of life it becomes more ac¬ 
tive, and in proportion it acquires the 
power of growth by assimilation instead 
of accumulation. Looking at existence 
from this special point of view (which in¬ 
deed-is a difficult one to maintain for long, 
as we habitually look at life in planes and 
forget the great lines which connect and 
run through these), we immediately per- 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


57 


ceive it to be reasonable to suppose that as 
we advance beyond our present standpoint 
the power of growth by assimilation will 
become greater and probably change into 
a method yet more rapid, easy, and uncon¬ 
scious. The universe is, in fact, full of 
magnificent promise for us, if we will but 
lift our eyes and see. It is that lifting of 
the eyes which is the first need and the 
first difficulty; we are so apt readily to be 
content with what we see within touch of 
our hands. It is the essential characteristic 
of the man of genius that he is compara¬ 
tively indifferent to that fruit which is just 
within touch, and hungers for that which 
is afar on the hills. In fact he does not 
need the sense of contact to arouse longing. 
He knows that this distant fruit, which he 
perceives without the aid of the physical 
senses, is a subtler and a stronger food than 
any which appeals to them. And how is 
he rewarded ! When he tastes that fruit, 
how strong and sweet is its flavor, and 
what a new sense of life rushes upon him ! 
For in recognizing that flavor he has recog- 


58 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

nized the existence of the subtile senses, 
those which feed the life of the inner man; 
and it is by the strength of that inner 
man, and by his strength only, that the 
latch of the Golden Gates can be lifted. 

In fact it is only by the development and 
growth of the inner man^that the existence 
of these Gates, and of that to which they 
admit, can be even perceived. While man 
is content with his gross senses and cares 
nothing for his subtile ones, the Gates 
remain literally invisible. As to the boor 
the gateway of the intellectual life is as 
a thing uncreate and non-existent, so to 
the man of the gross senses, even if his 
intellectual life is active, that which lies 
beyond is uncreate and non-existent, only 
because he does not open the book. 

To the servant who dusts the scholar’s 
library the closed volumes are meaningless ; 
they do not even appear to contain a prom¬ 
ise unless he also is a scholar, not merely a 
servant. It is possible to gaze throughout 
eternity upon a shut exterior from sheer 
indolence, — mental indolence, which is in- 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


59 


credulity, and which at last men learn to 
pride themselves on; they call it scepti¬ 
cism, and talk of the reign of reason. It is 
no more a state to justify pride than that of 
the Eastern sybarite who will not even lift 
his food to his mouth ; he is “ reasonable ” 
also in that he sees no value in activity, 
and therefore does not exercise it. So with 
the sceptic; decay follows the condition of 
inaction, whether it be mental, psychic, or 
physical. 


III. 

And now let us consider how the initial 
difficulty of fastening the interest on that 
which is unseen is to be overcome. Our 
gross senses refer only to that which is 
objective in the ordinary sense of the word ; 
but just beyond this field of life there are 
finer sensations which appeal to finer senses. 
Here we find the first clew to the stepping- 
stones we need. Man looks from this point 
of view like a point where many rays or 
lines centre; and if he has the courage or 


60 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the interest to detach himself from the sim¬ 
plest form of life, the point, and explore but 
a little way along these lines or rays, his 
whole being at once inevitably widens and 
expands, the man begins to grow in great¬ 
ness. But it is evident, if we accept this 
illustration as a fairly true one, that the 
chief point of importance is to explore no 
more persistently on one line than another; 
else the result must be a deformity. We 
all know how powerful is the majesty and 
personal dignity of a forest tree which has 
had air enough to breathe, and room for 
its widening roots, and inner vitality with 
which to accomplish its unceasing task. It 
obeys the perfect natural law of growth, 
and the peculiar awe it inspires arises from 
this fact. 

How is it possible to obtain recognition 
of the inner man, to observe its growth and 
foster it ? 

Let us try to follow a little way the clew 
we have obtained, though words will prob¬ 
ably soon be useless. 

We must each travel alone and without 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


61 


aids, as the traveller has to climb alone 
when he nears the summit of the mountain. 
No beast of burden can help him there; 
neither can the gross senses or anything 
that touches the gross senses help him 
here. But for a little distance words may 
go with us. 

The tongue recognizes the value of sweet¬ 
ness or piquancy in food. To the man 
whose senses are of the simplest order 
there is no other idea of sweetness than 
this. But a finer essence, a more highly 
placed sensation of the same order, is 
reached by another perception. The sweet¬ 
ness on the face of a lovely woman, or 
in the smile of a friend, is recognized by 
the man whose inner senses have even a 
little — a mere stirring of—vitality. To 
the one who has lifted the golden latch the 
spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself 
whence all softness arises, is opened and 
becomes part of his heritage. 

But before this fountain can be tasted, 
or any other spring reached, any source 
found, a heavy weight has to be lifted 


62 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

from the heart, an iron bar which holds it 
down and prevents it from arising in its 
strength. 

The man who recognizes the flow of 
sweetness from its source through Nature, 
through all forms of life, he has lifted this, 
he has raised himself into that state in which 
there is no bondage. He knows that he is a 
part of the great whole, and it is this knowl¬ 
edge which is his heritage. It is through 
the breaking asunder of the arbitrary bond 
which holds him to his personal centre that 
he comes of age and becomes ruler of his 
kingdom. As he widens out, reaching by 
manifold experience along those lines which 
centre at the point where he stands em¬ 
bodied, he discovers that he has touch with 
all life, that he contains within himself the 
whole. And then he has but to yield him¬ 
self to the great force which we call good, 
to clasp it tightly with the grasp of his 
soul, and he is carried swiftly on to the 
great, wide waters of real living. What are 
those waters ? In our present life we have 
but the shadow of the substance. No man 


THE INITIAL EFFORT. 


65 


loves without satiety, no man drinks wine 
without return of thirst. Hunger and 
longing darken the sky and make the earth 
unfriendly. What we need is an earth that 
will bear living fruit, a sky that will be al¬ 
ways full of light. Needing this positively, 
we shall surely find it. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 

L 

Look into the deep heart of life, whence 
pain conies to darken men’s lives. She is 
always on the threshold, and behind her 
stands despair. 

What are these two gaunt figures, and 
why are they permitted to be our constant 
followers ? 

It is we who permit them, we who order 
them, as we permit and order the action of 
our bodies ; and we do so as unconsciously. 
But by scientific experiment and inves¬ 
tigation we have learned much about our 
physical life, and it would seem as if we 
can obtain at least as much result with 
'regard to our inner life by adopting similar 
methods. 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 65 

Pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys. 
Regarded from a sufficiently removed stand¬ 
point, it appears as medicine, as a knife, as 
a weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an 
implement, a tiling which is used, evidently. 
What we desire to discover is, who is the 
user; what part of ourselves is it that de¬ 
mands the presence of this thing so hateful 
to the rest? 

Medicine is used by the physician, the 
knife by the surgeon ; but the weapon 
of destruction is used by the enemy, the 
hater. 

Is it, then, that we do not only use means, 
or desire to use means, for the benefit of 
our souls, but that also we wage warfare 
within ourselves, and do battle in the in¬ 
ner sanctuary ? It would seem so ; for it 
is certain that if man’s will relaxed with 
regard to it he would no longer retain life 
in that state in which pain exists. Why 
does he desire his own hurt ? 

The answer may at first sight seem to be 
that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is 
willing to continue on that battlefield where 
5 


66 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

it wages war with pain for the possession 
of him, hoping always that pleasure will 
win the victory and take him home to her¬ 
self. This is but the external aspect of the 
man’s state. In himself he knows well 
that pain is co-ruler with pleasure, and that 
though the war wages always it never will 
be won. The superficial observer concludes 
that man submits to the inevitable. But 
that is a fallacy not worthy of discussion. 
A little serious thought shows us that man 
does not exist at all except by exercise 
of his positive qualities; it is but logical 
to suppose that he chooses the state he 
will live in by the exercise of those same 
qualities. 

Granted, then, for the sake of our ar¬ 
gument, that he desires pain, why is it 
that he desires anything so annoying to 
himself ? 


II. 

If we carefully consider the constitution 
of man and its tendencies, it would seem 
as if there were two definite directions in 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 


67 


which he grows. He is like a tree which 
strikes its roots into the ground while it 
throws up young branches towards the 
heavens. These two lines which go out¬ 
ward from the central personal point are 
to him clear, definite, and intelligible. He 
calls one good and the other evil. But 
man is not, according to any analogy, ob¬ 
servation, or experience, a straight line. 
Would that he were, and that life, or 
progress, or development, or whatever we 
choose to call it, meant merely following 
one straight road or another, as the religion¬ 
ists pretend it does. The whole question, 
the mighty problem, would be very easily 
solved then. But it is not so easy to go 
to hell as preachers declare it to be. It 
is as hard a task as to find one’s way to the 
Golden Gate. A man may wreck himself 
utterly in sense-pleasure, — may debase his 
whole nature, as it seems, — yet he fails 
of becoming the perfect devil, for there is 
still the spark of divine light within him. 
He tries to choose the broad road which 
leads to destruction, and enters bravely on 


68 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

his headlong career. But very soon he is 
checked and startled by some unthought-of 
tendency in himself, — some of the many 
other radiations which go forth from his 
centre of self. He suffers as the body suf¬ 
fers when it develops monstrosities which 
impede its healthy action. He has created 
pain, and encountered his own creation. It 
may seem as if this argument is difficult of 
application with regard to physical pain. 
Not so, if man is regarded from a loftier 
standpoint than that we generally occupy. 
If he is looked upon as a powerful con¬ 
sciousness which forms its external mani¬ 
festations according to its desires, then it is 
evident that physical pain results from de¬ 
formity in those desires. No doubt it will 
appear to many minds that this conception 
of man is too gratuitous, and involves too 
large a mental leap into unknown places 
where proof is unobtainable. But if the 
mind is accustomed to look upon life from 
this standpoint, then very soon none other 
is acceptable; the threads of existence, which 
to the purely materialistic observer appear 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 


69 


hopelessly entangled, become separated and 
straightened, so that a new intelligibleness 
illumines the universe. The arbitrary and 
cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure 
at will then disappears from the stage ; and 
it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary 
character, and, worse still, is a mere crea¬ 
ture of straw, who cannot even strut upon 
the boards without being upheld on all sides 
by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, 
surely, on the same principle that he lives 
in one city of the earth or another; at all 
events, if it is too much to say that this is 
so, one may safely ask, why is it not so ? 
There is neither for nor against which will 
appeal to the materialist, or which would 
weigh in a court of justice ; but I aver this 
in favor of the argument, — that no man 
having once seriously considered it can go 
back to the formal theories of the sceptics. 
It is like putting on swaddling-clothes again. 

Granting, then, for the sake of this argu¬ 
ment, that man is a powerful consciousness 
who is his own creator, his own judge, and 
within whom lies all life in potentiality, 


70 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

even the ultimate goal, then let us consider 
why he causes himself to suffer. 

If pain is the result of uneven develop¬ 
ment, of monstrous growths, of defective 
advance at different points, why does man 
not learn the lesson which this should teach 
him, and take pains to develop equally ? 

It would seem to me as if the answer to 
this question is that this is the very lesson 
which the human race is engaged in learn¬ 
ing. Perhaps this may seem too bold a 
statement to make in the face of ordinary 
thinking, which either regards man as a 
creature of chance dwelling in chaos, or as 
a soul bound to the inexorable wheel of a 
tyrant’s chariot and hurried on either to 
heaven or to hell. But such a mode of 
thought is after all but the same as that 
of the child who regards his parents as the 
final arbiters of his destinies, and in fact 
the gods or demons of his universe. As he 
grows he casts aside this idea, finding that 
it is simply a question of coming of age, 
and that he is himself the king of life like 
any other man. 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 


71 


So it is with the human race. It is king 
of its world, arbiter of its own destiny, and 
there is none to say it nay. Who talk of 
Providence and chance have not paused to 
think. 

Destiny, the inevitable, does indeed ex¬ 
ist for the race and for the individual; but 
who can ordain this save the man himself ? 
There is no clew in heaven or earth to the 
existence of any ordainer other than the 
man who suffers or enjoys that which is 
ordained. We know so little of our own 
constitution, we are so ignorant of our di¬ 
vine functions, that it is impossible for us 
yet to know how much or how little we are 
actually fate itself. But this at all events 
we know,— that so far as any provable per¬ 
ception goes, no clew to the existence of an 
ordainer has yet been discovered; whereas 
if we give but a very little attention to the 
life about us in order to observe the action 
of the man upon his own future, we soon 
perceive this power as an actual force in 
operation. It is visible, although our range 
of vision is so very limited. 


72 THROUGn THE GATES OF GOLD. 

The man of the world, pure and simple, 
is by far the best practical observer and 
philosopher with regard to life, because he 
is not blinded by any prejudices. He will 
be found always to believe that as a man 
sows so shall he reap. And this is so evi¬ 
dently true when it is considered, that if 
one takes the larger view, including all hu¬ 
man life, it makes intelligible the awful 
Nemesis which seems consciously to pursue 
the human race, — that inexorable appear¬ 
ance of pain in the midst of pleasure. The 
great Greek poets saw this apparition so 
plainly that their recorded observation has 
given to us younger and blinder observers 
the idea of it. It is unlikely that so mate¬ 
rialistic a race as that which has grown up 
all over the West would have discovered 
for itself the existence of this terrible factor 
in human life without the assistance of the 
older poets, — the poets of the past. And 
in this we may notice, by the way, one dis¬ 
tinct value of the study of the classics, — 
that the great ideas and facts about human 
life which the superb ancients put into their 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 


73 


poetry shall not be absolutely lost as are 
their arts. No doubt the world will flower 
again, and greater thoughts and more pro¬ 
found discoveries than those of the past 
will be the glory of the men of the future 
efflorescence; but until that far-off day 
comes we cannot prize too dearly the treas¬ 
ures left us. 

There is one aspect of the question which 
seems at first sight positively to negative 
this mode of thought; and that is the suf¬ 
fering in the apparently purely physical 
body of the dumb beings, — young chil¬ 
dren, idiots, animals, — and their desperate 
need of the power which comes of any sort 
of knowledge to help them through their 
sufferings. 

The difficulty which will arise in the 
mind with regard to this comes from the 
untenable idea of the separation of the soul 
from the body. It is supposed by all those 
who look only at material life (and espe¬ 
cially by the physicians of the flesh) that 
the body and the brain are a pair of part¬ 
ners who live together hand in hand and 


74 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

react one upon another. Beyond that they 
recognize no cause and therefore allow of 
none. They forget that the brain and the 
body are as evidently mere mechanism as 
the hand or the foot. There is the inner 
man—the soul — behind, using all these 
mechanisms ; and this is as evidently the 
truth with regard to all the existences we 
know of as with regard to man himself. 
We cannot find any point in the scale of 
being at which soul-causation ceases or can 
cease. The dull oyster must have that in 
him which makes him _ choose the inactive 
life he leads; none else can choose it for 
him but the soul behind, which makes him 
be. How else can he be where he is, or be 
at all ? Only by the intervention of an 
impossible creator called by some name or 
other. 

It is because man is so idle, so indisposed 
to assume or accept responsibility, that he 
falls back upon this temporary makeshift 
of a creator. It is temporary indeed, for 
it can only last during the activity of the 
particular brain power which finds its place 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 


75 


among us. When the man drops this men¬ 
tal life behind him, he of necessity leaves 
with it its magic lantern and the pleasant 
illusions he has conjured up by its aid. 
That must be a very uncomfortable mo¬ 
ment, and must produce a sense of naked¬ 
ness not to be approached by any other 
sensation. It would seem as well to save 
one’s self this disagreeable experience by 
refusing to accept unreal phantasms as 
things of flesh and blood and power. Upon 
the shoulders of the Creator man likes to 
thrust the responsibility not only of his 
capacity for sinning and the possibility of 
his salvation, but of his very life itself, his 
very consciousness. It is a poor Creator 
that he thus contents himself with, — one 
who is pleased with a universe of puppets, 
and amused by pulling their strings. If he 
is capable of such enjoyment, he must yet 
be in his infancy. Perhaps that is so, after 
all; the God within us is in his infancy, 
and refuses to recognize his high estate. 
If indeed the soul of man is subject to the 
laws of growth, of decay, and of re-birth as 


76 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

to its body, then there is no wonder at its 
blindness. But this is evidently not so; 
for the soul of man is of that order of life 
which causes shape and form, and is unaf¬ 
fected itself by these things,— of that order 
of life which like the pure, the abstract 
flame burns wherever it is lit. This cannot 
be changed or affected by time, and is of its 
very nature superior to growth and decay. 
It stands in that primeval place which is the 
only throne of God, — that place whence 
forms of life emerge and to which they 
return. That place is the central point of 
existence, wdiere there is a permanent spot 
of life as there is in the midst of the heart 
of man. It is by the equal development of 
that, — first by the recognition of it, and 
then by its equal development upon the 
many radiating lines of experience, — that 
man is at last enabled to reach the Golden 
Gate and lift the latch. The process is the 
gradual recognition of the god in himself; 
the goal is reached w T hen that godhood is 
consciously restored to its right glory. 


THE MEANING OF FAIN. 


77 


ill. 

The first thing which it is necessary for 
the soul of man to do in order to engage in 
this great endeavor of discovering true life 
is the same thing that the child first does 
in its desire for activity in the body,— he 
must be able to stand. It is clear that the 
power of standing, of equilibrium, of con¬ 
centration, of uprightness, in the soul, is a 
quality of a marked character. The word 
that presents itself most readily as descrip¬ 
tive of this quality is “ confidence.” 

To remain still amid life and its changes, 
and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a 
feat which can only be accomplished by the 
man who has confidence in himself and in 
his destiny. Otherwise the hurrying forms 
of life, the rushing tide of men, the great 
floods of thought, must inevitably carry 
him with them, and then he will lose that 
place of consciousness whence it was possi¬ 
ble to start on the great enterprise. For 
it must be done knowingly, and without 
pressure from without, — this act of the 


78 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

new-born man. All the great ones of the 
earth have possessed this confidence, and 
have stood firmly on that place which was 
to them the one solid spot in the universe. 
To each man this place is of necessity dif¬ 
ferent. Each man must find his own earth 
and his own heaven. 

We have the instinctive desire to relieve 
pain, but we work in externals in this as in 
everything else. We simply alleviate it; 
and if we do more, and drive it from its 
first chosen stronghold, it reappears in 
some other place with reinforced vigor. 
If it is eventually driven off the physical 
plane by persistent and successful effort, 
it reappears on the mental or emotional 
planes where no man can touch it. That 
this is so is easily seen by those who con¬ 
nect the various planes of sensation, and 
who observe life with that additional illu¬ 
mination. Men habitually regard these dif¬ 
ferent forms of feeling as actually separate, 
whereas in fact they are evidently only . 
different sides of one centre, — the point | 
of personality. If that which arises in the 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 79 

centre, the fount of life, demands some hin¬ 
dered action, and consequently causes pain, 
the force thus created being driven from 
one stronghold must find another; it can¬ 
not be driven out. And all the blendings 
of human life which cause emotion and dis¬ 
tress exist for its use and purposes as well 
as for those of pleasure. Both have their 
home in man; both demand their expres¬ 
sion of right. The marvellously delicate 
mechanism of the human frame is con¬ 
structed to answer to their lightest touch; 
the extraordinary intricacies of human rela¬ 
tions evolve themselves, as it were, for the 
satisfaction of these two great opposites of 
the soul. 

Pain and pleasure stand apart and sepa¬ 
rate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the 
merging, the making the two into one, 
that joy and deep sensation and profound 
peace are obtained. Where there is nei¬ 
ther male nor female, neither pain nor 
pleasure, there is the god in man domi¬ 
nant, and then is life real. 

To state the matter in this way may 


80 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

savor too much of the dogmatist who utters 
his assertions uncontradicted from a safe 
pulpit; but it is dogmatism only as a sci¬ 
entist’s record of effort in a new direction 
is dogmatism. Unless the existence of the 
Gates of Gold can be proved to be real, 
and not the mere phantasmagoria of fanci¬ 
ful visionaries, then they are not worth 
talking about at all. In the nineteenth 
century hard facts or legitimate arguments 
alone appeal to men’s minds ; and so much 
the better. For unless the life we advance 
towards is increasingly real and actual, it 
is worthless, and time is wasted in going 
after it. Reality is man’s greatest need, 
and he demands to have it at all hazards, 
at any price. Be it so. No one doubts 
he is right. Let us then go in search of 
reality. 


IV. 

One definite lesson learned by all acute 
sufferers will be of the greatest service to 
us in this consideration. In intense pain a 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 81 

point is reached where it is indistinguisha¬ 
ble from its opposite, pleasure. This is 
indeed so, but few have the heroism or the 
strength to suffer to such a far point. It 
is as difficult to reach it by the other road. 
Only a chosen few have the gigantic ca¬ 
pacity for pleasure which will enable them 
to travel to its other side. Most have but 
enough strength to enjoy and to become 
the slave of the enjoyment. Yet man has 
undoubtedly within himself the heroism 
needed for the great journey; else how is 
it that martyrs have smiled amid the tor¬ 
ture ? How is it that the profound sinner 
who lives for pleasure can at last feel stir 
within himself the divine afflatus? 

In both these cases the possibility has 
arisen of finding the way; but too often 
that possibility is killed by the overbalance 
of the startled nature. The martyr has ac¬ 
quired a passion for pain and lives in the 
idea of heroic suffering; the sinner be¬ 
comes blinded by the thought of virtue 
and worships it as an end, an object, a 
thing divine in itself; whereas it can only 
6 


82 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

be divine as it is part of that infinite whole 
which includes vice as well as virtue. How 
is it possible to divide the infinite, — that 
which is one ? It is as reasonable to lend 
divinity to any object as to take a cup of 
water from the sea and declare that in that 
is contained the ocean. You cannot sepa¬ 
rate the ocean ; the salt water is part of the 
great sea and must be so; but neverthe¬ 
less you do not hold the sea in your hand. 
Men so longingly desire personal power 
that they are ready to put infinity into a 
cup, the divine idea into a formula, in order 
that they may fancy themselves in posses¬ 
sion of it. These only are those who can¬ 
not rise and approach the Gates of Gold, 
for the great breath of life confuses them; 
they are struck with horror to find how 
great it is. The idol-worshipper keeps an 
image of his idol in his heart and burns 
a candle always before it. It is his own, 
and he is pleased at that thought, even if 
he bow in reverence before it. In how 
many virtuous and religious men does not 
this same state exist? In the recesses of 


THE MEANING OF PAIN. 83 

the soul the lamp is burning before a house¬ 
hold god ? — a thing possessed by its wor¬ 
shipper and subject to him. Men cling 
with desperate tenacity to these dogmas, 
these moral laws, these principles and 
modes of faith which are their household 
gods, their personal idols. Bid them burn 
the unceasing flame in reverence only to 
the infinite, and they turn from you. What¬ 
ever their manner of scorning your protest 
may be, within themselves it leaves a sense 
of aching void. For the noble soul of the 
man, that potential king which is within us 
all, knows full well that this household idol 
may be cast down and destroyed at any 
moment, — that it is without finality in 
itself, without any real and absolute life. 
And he has been content in his possession, 
forgetting that anything possessed can only 
by the immutable laws of life be held 
temporarily. He has forgotten that the 
infinite is his only friend ; he has forgot¬ 
ten that in its glory is his only home,— 
that it alone can be his god. There he 
feels as if he is homeless; but that amid 


84 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the sacrifices he offers to his own espe- 
cial idol there is for him a brief resting- 
place; and for this he clings passionately 
to it. 

Few have the courage even slowly to 
face the great desolateness which lies out¬ 
side themselves, and must lie there so long 
as they cling to the person which they rep¬ 
resent, the 66 1” which is to them the centre 
of the world, the cause of all life. In their 
longing for a God they find the reason for 
the existence of one; in their desire for a 
sense-body and a world to enjoy in, lies 
to them the cause of the universe. These 
beliefs may be hidden very deep beneath 
the surface, and be indeed scarcely accessi¬ 
ble ; but in the fact that they are there is 
the reason why the man holds himself up¬ 
right. To himself he is himself the infinite 
and the God ; he holds the ocean in a cup. 
In this delusion he nurtures the egoism 
which makes life pleasure and makes pain 
pleasant. In this profound egoism is the 
very cause and source of the existence of 
pleasure and of pain. For unless man 


/THE MEANING OF PAIN. 85 

vacillated between these two, and cease¬ 
lessly reminded himself by sensation that 
he exists, he would forget it. And in this 
fact lies the whole answer to the question, 
“ Why does man create pain for his own 
discomfort ? ” 

The strange and mysterious fact remains 
unexplained as yet, that man in so deluding 
himself is merely interpreting Nature back¬ 
wards and putting into the words of death 
the meaning of life. For that man does 
indeed hold within him the infinite, and 
that the ocean is really in the cup, is an 
incontestable truth ; but it is only so be¬ 
cause the cup is absolutely non-existent. 
It is merely an experience of the infinite, 
having no permanence, liable to be shat¬ 
tered at any instant. It is in the claiming 
of reality and permanence for the four 
walls of his personality, that man makes 
the vast blunder which plunges him into a 
prolonged series of unfortunate incidents, 
and intensifies continually the existence of 
his favorite forms of sensation. Pleasure 
and pain become to him more real than 


86 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the great ocean of which he is a part and 
where his home is; he perpetually knocks 
himself painfully against these walls where 
he feels, and his tiny self oscillates within 
his chosen prison. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 

I. 

Strength to step forward is the pri¬ 
mary need of him who has chosen his 
path. Where is this to be found ? Look- 
in o* round, it is not hard to see where other 
men find their strength. Its source is 
profound conviction. Through this great 
moral power is brought to birth in the nat¬ 
ural life of the man that which enables him, 
however frail he may be, to go on and 
conquer. Conquer what ? Not continents, 
not worlds, but himself. Through that su¬ 
preme victory is obtained the entrance to 
the whole, where all that might be con¬ 
quered and obtained by effort becomes at 
once not his, but himself. 

To put on armor and go forth to war, 
.taking the chances of death in the hurry 


88 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

of the fight, is an easy thing ; to stand 
still amid the jangle of the world, to pre¬ 
serve stillness within the turmoil of the 
body, to hold silence amid the thousand 
cries of the senses and desires, and then, 
stripped of all armor and without hurry 
or excitement take the deadly serpent of 
self and kill it, is no easy thing. Yet that 
is what has to be done; and it can only 
be done in the moment of equilibrium when 
the enemy is disconcerted by the silence. 

But there is needed for this supreme 
moment a strength such as no hero of the 
battlefield needs. A great soldier must 
be filled with the profound convictions of 
the justness of his cause and the rightness 
of his method. The man who wars against 
himself and wins the battle can do it 
only when he knows that in that war 
he is doing the one thing which is worth 
doing, and when he knows that in doing 
it he is winning heaven and hell as his 
servitors. Yes, he stands on both. He 
needs no heaven where pleasure comes 
as a long-promised reward; he fears no 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 89 

hell where pain waits to punish him for his 
sins. For he has conquered once for all 
that shifting serpent in himself which turns 
from side to side in its constant desire of 
contact, in its perpetual search after pleas¬ 
ure and pain. Never again (the victory 
once really won) can he tremble or grow 
exultant at any thought of that which the 
future holds. Those burning sensations 
which seemed to him to be the only proofs 
of his existence are his no longer. How, 
then, can he know that he lives ? He 
knows it only by argument. And in time 
he does not care to argue about it. For 
him there is then peace ; and he will find 
in that peace the power he has coveted. 
Then he will know what is that faith which 
can remove mountains. 


II. 

Religion holds a man back from the path, 
prevents his stepping forward, for various 
very plain reasons. First, it makes the 


90 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

vital mistake of distinguishing between 
good and evil. Nature knows no such dis¬ 
tinction; and the moral and social laws set 
us by our religions are as temporary, as 
much a thing of our own special mode and 
form of existence, as are the moral and 
social laws of the ants or the bees. We 
pass out of that state in which these things 
appear to be final, and we forget them for¬ 
ever. This is easily shown, because a man 
of broad habits of thought and of intelli¬ 
gence must modify his code of life when he 
dwells among another people. These peo¬ 
ple among whom he is an alien have their 
own deep-rooted religions and hereditary 
convictions, against which he cannot offend. 
Unless his is an abjectly narrow and un¬ 
thinking mind, he sees that their form of 
law and order is as good as his own. What 
then can he do but reconcile his conduct 
gradually to their rules ? And then if he 
dwells among them many years the sharp 
edge of difference is worn away, and he 
forgets at last where their faith ends and 
his commences. Yet is it for his own 


TIIE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 


91 


people to say he has done wrong, if he has 
injured no man and remained just? 

I am not attacking law and order; I do 
not speak of these things with rash dislike. 
In their place they are as vital and neces¬ 
sary as the code which governs the life of a 
beehive is to its successful conduct. What 
I wish to point out is that law and order in 
themselves are quite temporary and unsat¬ 
isfactory. When a man’s soul passes away 
from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of 
law and order do not accompany it. If it 
is strong, it is the ecstasy of true being and 
real life which it becomes possessed of, as all 
know who have watched by the dying. If 
the soul is weak, it faints and fades away, 
overcome by the first flush of the new 
life. 

Am I speaking too positively ? Only 
those who live in the active life of the mo¬ 
ment, who have not watched beside the 
dead and dying, who have not walked the 
battlefield and looked in the faces of men 
in their last agony, will say so. The strong 
man goes forth from his body exultant. 


92 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 


Why? Because he is no longer held 
back and made to quiver by hesitation. In 
the strange moment of death he has had 
release given him; and with a sudden pas¬ 
sion of delight he recognizes that it is 
release. Had he been sure of this before, 
he would have been a great sage, a man 
to rule the world, for he would have had 
the power to rule himself and his own 
body. That release from the chains of 
ordinary life can be obtained as easily dur¬ 
ing life as by death. It only needs a suf¬ 
ficiently profound conviction to enable the 
man to look on his body with the same 
emotions as he would look on the body of 
another man, or on the bodies of a thousand 
men. In contemplating a battlefield it is 
impossible to realize the agony of every 
sufferer; why, then, realize your own pain 
more keenly than another’s ? Mass the 
whole together, and look at it all from a 
wider standpoint than that of the individual 
life. That you actually feel your own 
physical wound is a weakness of your lim¬ 
itation. The man who is developed psychi- 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 


93 


cally feels the wound of another as keenly 
as his own, and does not feel his own at all 
if he is strong enough to will it so. Every 
one who has examined at all seriously into 
psychic conditions knows this to be a fact, 
more or less marked, according to the 
psychic development. In many instances 
the psychic is more keenly and selfishly 
aware of his own pain than of any other 
person’s; but that is when the development, 
marked perhaps so far as it has gone, only 
reaches a certain point. It is the power 
which carries the man to the margin of 
that consciousness which is profound peace 
and vital activity. It can carry him no 
further. But if he has reached its margin 
he is freed from the paltry dominion of his 
own self. That is the first great release. 
Look at the sufferings which come upon 
us from our narrow and limited experience 
and sympathy. We each stand quite alone, 
a solitary unit, a pygmy in the world. What 
good fortune can we expect ? The great 
life of the world rushes by, and we are in 
danger each instant that it will overwhelm 


94 TIIROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 


us or even utterly destroy us. There is no 
defence to be offered to it; no opposition 
army can be set up, because in this life 
every man fights his own battle against 
every other man, and no two can be united 
under the same banner. There is only one 
way of escape from this terrible danger 
which we battle against every hour. Turn 
round, and instead of standing against the 
forces, join them ; become one with Nature, 
and go easily upon her path. Do not re¬ 
sist or resent the circumstances of life any 
more than the plants resent the rain and 
the wind. Then suddenly, to your own 
amazement, you find you have time and 
strength to spare, to use in the great battle 
which it is inevitable every man must fight, 
— that in himself, that which leads to his 
own conquest. 

Some might say, to his own destruction. 
And why ? Because from the hour when 
he first tastes the splendid reality of living 
he forgets more and more his individual 
self. No longer does he fight for it, or pit 
its strength against the strength of others. 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 


95 


No longer does he care to defend or to 
feed it. Yet when he is thus indifferent to 
its welfare, the individual self grows more 
stalwart and robust, like the prairie grasses 
and the trees of untrodden forests. It is 
a matter of indifference to him whether 
this is so or not. Only, if it is so, he has 
a fine instrument ready to his hand; and 
in due proportion to the completeness of 
his indifference to it is the strength and 
beauty of his personal self. This is readily 
seen; a garden flower becomes a mere de¬ 
generate copy of itself if it is simply neg¬ 
lected ; a plant must be cultivated to the 
highest pitch, and benefit by the whole of 
the gardener’s skill, or else it must be a 
pure savage, wild, and fed only by the earth 
and sky. Who cares for any intermediate 
state? What value or strength is there 
in the neglected garden rose which has 
the canker in every bud ? For diseased or 
dwarfed blossoms are sure to result from an 
arbitrary change of condition, resulting from 
the neglect of the man who has hitherto 
been the providence of the plant in its 


96 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

unnatural life. But there are wind-blown 
plains where the daisies grow tall, with 
moon faces such as no cultivation can pro¬ 
duce in them. Cultivate, then, to the very 
utmost; forget no inch of your garden 
ground, no smallest plant that grows in it; 
make no foolish pretence nor fond mistake 
in the fancy that you are ready to forget 
it, and so subject it to the frightful conse¬ 
quences of half-measures. The plant that 
is watered to-day and forgotten to-morrow 
must dwindle or decay. The plant that 
looks for no help but from Nature itself 
measures its strength at once, and either 
dies and is re-created or grows into a great 
tree whose boughs fill the sky. But make 
no mistake like the religionists and some 
philosophers; leave no part of yourself 
neglected while you know it to be yourself. 
While the ground is the gardener’s it is his 
business to tend it; but some day a call 
may come to him from another country or 
from death itself, and in a moment he is 
no longer the gardener, his business is at 
an end, he has no more duty of that kind 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 


97 


at all. Then his favorite plants suffer and 
die, and the delicate ones become one with 
the earth. But soon fierce Nature claims 
the place for her own, and covers it with 
thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses some 
sapling in it till its branches shade the 
ground. Be warned, and tend your garden 
to the utmost, till you can pass away 
utterly and let it return to Nature and 
become the wind-blown plain where the 
wild-flowers grow. Then, if you pass that 
way and look at it, whatever has happened 
will neither grieve nor elate you. For you 
will be able to say, “ I am the rocky ground, 
I am the great tree, I am the strong dai¬ 
sies,” indifferent which it is that flourishes 
where once your rose-trees grew. But you 
must have learned to study the stars to some 
purpose before you dare to neglect your 
roses, and omit to fill the air with their 
cultivated fragrance. You must know your 
way through the trackless air, and from 
thence to the pure ether; you must be 
ready to lift the bar of the Golden Gate. 

Cultivate, I say, and neglect nothing. 

7 


98 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

Only remember, all the while you tend 
and water, that you are impudently usurp¬ 
ing the tasks of Nature herself. Having 
usurped her work, you must carry it through 
until you have reached a point when she 
has no power to punish you, when you are 
not afraid of her, but can with a bold front 
return her her own. She laughs in her 
sleeve, the mighty mother, watching you 
with covert, laughing eye, ready relent¬ 
lessly to cast the whole of your work into 
the dust if you do but give her the chance, 
if you turn idler and grow careless. The 
idler is father of the madman in the sense 
that the child is the father of the man. 
Nature has put her vast hand on him and 
crushed the whole edifice. The gardener 
and his rose-trees are alike broken and 
stricken by the great storm which her 
movement has created ; they lie helpless 
till the sand is swept over them and they 
are buried in a weary wilderness. From 
this desert spot Nature herself will re¬ 
create, and will use the ashes of the man 
who dared to face her as indifferently as 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 99 

the withered leaves of his plants. His 
body, soul, and spirit are all alike claimed 
by her. 


Ill 

The man who is strong, who has resolved 
to find the unknown path, takes with the 
utmost care every step. He utters no idle 
word, he does no unconsidered action, he 
neglects no duty or office however homely 
or however difficult. But while his eyes 
and hands and feet are thus fulfilling their 
tasks, new eyes and hands and feet are 
being born within him. For his passionate 
and unceasing desire is to go that way on 
which the subtile organs only can guide 
him. The physical world he has learned, 
and knows how to use ; gradually his power 
is passing on, and he recognizes the psychic 
world. But he has to learn this world and 
know how to use it, and he dare not lose 
hold of the life he is familiar with till he 
has taken hold of that with which he is 
unfamiliar. When he has acquired such 


100 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

power with his psychic organs as the in¬ 
fant has with its physical organs when it 
first opens its lungs, then is the hour for 
the great adventure. How little is needed 
— yet how much that is! The man does 
but need the psychic body to be formed in 
all parts, as is an infant's; he does but 
need the profound and unshakable con¬ 
viction which impels the infant, that the 
new life is desirable. Once those condi¬ 
tions gained and he may let himself live in 
the new atmosphere and look up to the 
new sun. But then he must remember to 
check his new experience by the old. He 
is breathiftg still, though differently; he 
draws air into his lungs, and takes life from 
the sun. He has been born into the psy¬ 
chic world, and depends now on the psychic 
air and light. His goal is not here : this 
is but a subtile repetition of physical life; 
he has to pass through it according to sim¬ 
ilar laws. He must study, learn, grow, 
and conquer; never forgetting the while 
that his goal is that place where there is 
no air nor any sun or moon. 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 101 

Do not imagine that in this line of 
progress the man himself is being moved 
or changing his place. Not so. The truest 
illustration of the process is that of cutting 
through layers of crust or skin. The man, 
having learned his lesson fully, casts oh 
the physical life; having learned his lesson 
fully, casts oh the psychic life; having 
learned his lesson fully, casts oh the con¬ 
templative life, or life of adoration. 

All are cast aside at last, and he enters 
the great temple where any memory of self 
or sensation is left outside as the shoes are 
cast from the feet of the worshipper. That 
temple is the place of his own pure divinity, 
the central flame which, however obscured, 
has animated him through all these strug¬ 
gles. And having found this sublime home 
he is sure as the heavens themselves. He 
remains still, filled with all knowledge and 
power. The outer man, the adoring, the 
acting, the living personification, goes its 
own way hand in hand with Nature, and 
shows all the superb strength of the savage 
growth of the earth, lit by that instinct 


102 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

which contains knowledge. For in the in¬ 
most sanctuary, in the actual temple, the 
man has found the subtile essence of Nature 
herself. No longer can there be any differ¬ 
ence between them or any half-measures. 
And now comes the hour of action and 
power. In that inmost sanctuary all is to 
be found : God and his creatures, the fiends 
w 7 ho prey on them, those among men who 
have been loved, those who have been 
hated. Difference between them exists no 
longer. Then the soul of man laughs in its 
strength and fearlessness, and goes forth 
into the world in which its actions are 
needed, and causes these actions to take 
place without apprehension, alarm, fear, 
regret, or joy. 

This state is possible to man while yet 
he lives in the physical; for men have at¬ 
tained it while living. It alone can make 
actions in the physical divine and true. 

Life among objects of sense must forever 
be an outer shape to the sublime soul, — it 
can only become powerful life, the life of 
accomplishment, when it is animated by 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 


103 


the crowned and indifferent god that sits 
in the sanctuary. 

The obtaining of this condition is so su¬ 
premely desirable because from the moment 
it is entered there is no more trouble, no 
more anxiety, no more doubt or hesitation. 
As a great artist paints his picture fear¬ 
lessly and never committing any error 
which causes him regret, so the man who 
has formed his inner self deals with his life. 

But that is when the condition is en¬ 
tered. That which we who look towards 
the mountains hunger to know is the mode 
of entrance and the way to the Gate. The 
Gate is that Gate of Gold barred by a heavy 
bar of iron. The way to the threshold of 
it turns a man giddy and sick. It seems 
no path, it seems to end perpetually, its 
way lies along hideous precipices, it loses 
itself in deep waters. 

Once crossed and the way found it ap¬ 
pears wonderful that the difficulty should 
have looked so great. For'the path where 
it disappears does but turn abruptly, its line 
upon the precipice edge is wide enough for 


104 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

the feet, and across the deep waters that look 
so treacherous there is always a ford and a 
ferry. So it happens in all profound experi¬ 
ences of human nature. When the first grief 
tears the heart asunder it seems that the 
path has ended and a blank darkness taken 
the place of the sky. And yet by groping 
the soul passes on, and that difficult and 
seemingly hopeless turn in the road is 
passed. 

So with many another form of human tor¬ 
ture. Sometimes throughout a long period 
or a whole lifetime the path of existence 
is perpetually checked by what seem like 
insurmountable obstacles. Grief, pain, suf¬ 
fering, the loss of all that is beloved or val¬ 
ued, rise up before the terrified soul and 
check it at every turn. Who places those 
obstacles there ? The reason shrinks at the 
childish dramatic picture which the religion¬ 
ists place before it,— God permitting the 
Devil to torment His creatures for their ulti¬ 
mate good! When will that ultimate good 
be attained? The idea involved in this 
picture supposes an end, a goal. There is 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 105 

I 

none. We can any one of us safely assent 
to that; for as far as human observation, 
reason, thought, intellect, or instinct can 
reach towards grasping the mystery of life, 
all data obtained show that the path is end¬ 
less and that eternity cannot be blinked and 
converted by the idling soul into a million 
years. 

In man, taken individually or as a whole, 
there clearly exists a double constitution. I 
am speaking roughly now, being well aware 
that the various schools of philosophy cut 
him up and subdivide him according to their 
several theories. What I mean is this: that 
two great tides of emotion sweep through 
his nature, two great forces guide his life; 
the one makes him an animal, and the other 
makes him a god. No brute of the earth is 
so brutal as the man who subjects his godly 
power to his animal power. This is a mat¬ 
ter of course, because the whole force of the 
double nature is then used in one direction. 
The animal pure and simple obeys his in¬ 
stincts only and desires no more than to 
gratify his love of pleasure; he pays but 


106 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

little regard to the existence of other beings 
except in so far as they offer him pleasure 
or pain; he knows nothing of the abstract 
love of cruelty or of any of those vicious 
tendencies of the human being which have 
in themselves their own gratification. Thus 
the man who becomes a beast has a million 
times the grasp of life over the natural 
beast, and that which in the pure animal 
is sufficiently innocent enjoyment, uninter¬ 
rupted by an arbitrary moral standard, be¬ 
comes in him vice, because it is gratified 
on principle. Moreover he turns all the 
divine powers of his being into this chan¬ 
nel, and degrades his soul by making it the 
slave of his senses. The god, deformed and 
disguised, waits on the animal and feeds it. 

Consider then whether it is not possible 
to change the situation. The man himself 
is king of the country in which this strange 
spectacle is seen. He allows the beast to 
usurp the place of the god because for the 
moment the beast pleases his capricious 
royal fancy the most. This cannot last 
always; why let it last any longer ? So 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 107 

long as the animal rules there will be 
the keenest sufferings in consequence of 
change, of the vibration between pleasure 
and pain, of the desire for prolonged and 
pleasant physical life. And the god in his 
capacity of servant adds a thousand-fold to 
all this, by making physical life so much 
more filled with keenness of pleasure,— 
rare, volup uous, aesthetic pleasure, — and 
by intensity of pain so passionate that one 
knows not where it ends and where pleas¬ 
ure commences. So long as the god serves, 
so long the life of the animal will be en¬ 
riched and increasingly valuable. But let 
the king resolve to change the face of his 
court and forcibly evict the animal from 
the chair of state, restoring the god to the 
jfface of divinity. 

Ah, the profound peace that falls upon 
the palace! All is indeed changed. No 
longer is there the fever of personal long¬ 
ings or desires, no longer is there any rebel¬ 
lion or distress, no longer any hunger for 
pleasure or dread of pain. It is like a 
great calm descending on a stormy ocean ; 


108 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

it is like the soft rain of summer falling on 
parched ground; it is like the deep pool 
found amidst the weary, thirsty labyrinths 
of the unfriendly forest. 

But there is much more than this. Not 
only is man more than an animal because 
there is the god in him, but he is more than 
a god because there is the animal in him. 

Once force the animal into his rightful 
place, that of the inferior, and you find 
yourself in possession of a great force hith¬ 
erto unsuspected and unknown. The god 
as servant adds a thousand-fold to the 
pleasures of the animal; the animal as 
servant adds a thousand-fold to the pow¬ 
ers of the god. And it is upon the union, 
the right relation of these two forces in 
himself, that man stands as a strong king, 
and is enabled to raise his hand and lift 
the bar of the Golden Gate. When these 
forces are unfitly related, then the king is 
but a crowned voluptuary, without power, 
and whose dignity does but mock him ; for 
the animals, undivine, at least know peace 
and are not torn by vice and despair. 


THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. 109 

That is the whole secret. That is what 
makes man strong, powerful, able to grasp 
heaven and earth in his hands. Do not 
fancy it is easily done. Do not be deluded 
into the idea that the religious or the vir¬ 
tuous man does it! Not so. They do no 
more than fix a standard, a routine, a law, 
by which they hold the animal in check. 
The god is compelled to serve him in a cer¬ 
tain way, and does so, pleasing him with 
the beliefs and cherished fantasies of the 
religious, with the lofty sense of personal 
pride which makes the joy of the virtuous. 
These special and canonized vices are things 
too low and base to be possible to the pure 
animal, whose only inspirer is Nature her¬ 
self, always fresh as the dawn. The god in 
man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in 
its infamous power of production. 

The animal in man, elevated, is a thing 
unimaginable in its great powers of service 
and of strength. 

You forget, you who let your animal self 
live on, merely checked and held within cer¬ 
tain bounds, that it is a great force, an inte- 


110 THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD. 

gral portion of the animal life of the world 
you live in. With it you can sway men, 
and influence the very world itself, more or 
less perceptibly according to your strength. 
The god, given his right place, will so in¬ 
spire and guide this extraordinary creature, 
so educate and develop it, so force it into 
action and recognition of its kind, that it 
will make you tremble when you recognize 
the power that has awakened within you. 
The animal in yourself will then be a king 
among the animals of the world. 

This is the secret of the old-world magi¬ 
cians, who made Nature serve them and 
work miracles every day for their conven¬ 
ience. This is the secret of the coming 
race which Lord Lytton foreshadowed 
for us. 

But this power can only be attained 
by giving the god the sovereignty. Make 
your animal ruler over yourself, and he 
will never rule others. 


EPILOGUE. 

Secreted and hidden in the heart of the 
world and in the heart of man is the light 
wdiich can illumine all life, the future and 
the past. Shall we not search for it ? 
Surely some must do so. And then per¬ 
haps those will add what is needed to this 
poor fragment of thought. 


University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 
















































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“ Mrs. Charles Malden has written a pleasant little book,— all sensible books 
about Miss Austen are pleasant, and can hardly help being so; and this book is 
certainly not only sensible, but in parts acute.” — Spectator. 

SAINT THERESA OF AVILA. 

By Mrs. Bradley Gilman. (Famous Women Series.) i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, $1.00. 

The story of Theresa is founded upon historic facts, and is told nearly as 
possible in her own words. 

To the student of Christian history or of Spanish literature, Saint Theresa 
has an honored place; but to the general reader she is no more real than the 
enchanted princess of the fairy-tale, or the Lorelei of the Rhine. To make her 
a living, breathing human being, with feelings and foibles like our own, has been 
the most delicate part of the writer’s task. 

THE NEW PRIEST IN CONCEPTION BAY. 

A Novel. By Robert Lowell. A new revised edition. 1 vol. 
i2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. 





Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT. 

His Character. A Sermon by Rev. C. A. Bartol. Containing also 
A Tribute paid to Louisa M. Alcott. Pamphlet, 20 cents. 

THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM. 

A Novel. By Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner). First American, 
from the second London Edition. 161110. Cloth, red and black. Price, 
60 cents. 

No one can deny its great power. It is written with so constant an inten¬ 
sity of passionate feeling, with so much sincerity and depth of thought, with such 
a terrible realism in details, with so much sympathy and high imagination in its 
broader aspects, and finally with such a tense power, as of quivering muscles, 
that the reader, at once repelled and fascinated, cannot lay the book down until 
he has turned the last page. It is a book about which, whether one praise or 
condemn it, one is forced to speak in superlatives.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

OUR RECENT ACTORS. 

Being Recollections, Critical, and in many cases Personal, of Late 
Distinguished Performers of Both Sexes. With some Incidental Notices 
of Living Actors. By Westland Marston. 121110. Cloth. Price, 
$$2.00. 

A BOOK OF POEMS. 

By John W. Chadwick. Eighth edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
161110. Cloth. Price, #1.25. 

Of Mr. Chadwick’s “Book of Poems” seven editions have been sold 
already. From the present edition a number of the more personal and occasional 
poems have been omitted; and with those retained, a majority of the poems in a 
second volume, “ In Nazareth Town,” have been included, together with a good 
many that have not been before collected. Thus diminished and enlarged, the 
publishers of “ A Book of Poems ” feel that it is much improved, and that it will 
deserve even a larger circulation than it has heretofore enjoyed, though this has 
hardly been exceeded by any of our minor poets. 

ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 

By P. W. Clayden, author of “Samuel Sharpe, Egyptologist and 
Translator of the Bible,” “The Early Life of Samuel Rogers,” etc. 
2 vols., large post 8vo. Cloth. Price, $5.00. 

These volumes contain hitherto unpublished letters from Lord Byron, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Southey, Crabbe, Lord Holland, 
Napoleon, and others. 

“The charming volume in which Mr. Clayden gathered up, a year ago, the 
abundant materials to illustrate the early life of his kinsman, the author of ‘The 
Pleasures of Memory,’ has now been worthily supplemented by the two volumes 
which illustrate the last fifty years of that long life. As we run over the long list 
of his correspondents and friends, we scarcely miss a single conspicuous name. 
Among his American correspondents, from whom letters are given in Mr. Clay- 
den’s volumes, were Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, William H. Prescott, 
George Ticknor, Washington Irving, Mrs. Sigourney, and Charles Sumner. 

“ Mr. Clayden, whose long training as a writer of leading articles for a great 
London newspaper admirably qualified him for what has evidently been a labor of 
love, has connected his selections from Rogers’s correspondence by a sufficiently 
full narrative and by all needful elucidations. His style is clear, compact, and 
straightforward, and his volumes furnish abundant materials for forming a just 
estimate of Rogers’s place in English literature and English social life.”—- 
Boston Post. 


5 




Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


THE EARLY LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 

Author of “ The Pleasures of Memory.” By P. W. Clayden. nmo. < 
Cloth. Price, £1.75. 

“‘The Early Life of Samuel Rogers,’ which has been anticipated with an 
interest beyond that given to the announcement of any late book, is now ready, 
and will fully reach the importance that it promised. It covers a period of forty 
years, or to the opening of his house in St. James’ Place, and his appearance as 
one of the chief figures in English society, leaving to a promised volume the 
account of his subsequent life and his brilliant devotion to the distinguished men 
and women about him. 

“ The volume at hand is particularly illustrative of the author’s fidelity to a 
determination to an intimate and lull understanding, and presents the most satis¬ 
factory portraiture of Mr. Rogers, under influence of his motives and efforts, 
during his earlier years ” — Boston Globe. 


THE STUDY OF POLITICS. 

By Prof. YV. P. Atkinson. Uniform with “On History and the 
Study of History,” and “ On the Right Use of Books.” i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, 50 cents. 

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. 

By Edward Everett Hale. Holiday Edition, with Illustrations 
by F. T. Merrill. 4U). Cloth, gilt. Price, $2.50. 

“ Roberts Brothers have selected for illustration a story that in its time had 
probably more readers than any short story ever published. ‘The Man without 
a Country,’ written ty Edward Everett Hale at least twenty-five years ago, called 
up a w>ave of sympathy and w'onder that passed over the whole country, intensify¬ 
ing and increasing the patriotism and enthusiasm of the period. It was w'ritten 
as a contribution toward the formation of a just and true national sentiment, or 
a sentiment of love to the nation. The present generation will find the story 
comparatively a new' one, and will enjoy, as other readers have, its realism and 
pathos, and ask again and again, as has been asked many times before, Is it true ? 
This holiday edition is illustrated by F. T. Merrill with many designs in sympathy 
with the story. No more delightful book is offered for the holiday trade than 
this popular story.” — Book Buyer. 

FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. 

Part II. The Treaty of Peace and Franklin’s Life till his Return. 
From original documents. By Edward Everett Hale and Edward 
E. Hale, Jr. 1 vol. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, uniform with the first vol¬ 
ume. Price, £3.00. 

MR. TANGIER’S VACATIONS. 

A Novel. By Rev. E. E. Hale, author of “In His Name,” “Man 
without a Country,” etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, #1.25. Paper, 50 cents. 

IN HIS NAME. 

Illustrated. By Rev. E. E. Hale. A new and cheaper edition of 
this beautiful story, including all of the illustrations contained in the larger 
edition. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Uniform with “ Ten Times One,” 
“The Man without a Country,” etc. Price, $1.25. 

6 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


THE PENTAMERON, CITATION FROM WILLIAM SHAK- 
SPEARE, AND MINOR PROSE PIECES AND CRITICISMS. 

By Walter Savage Landor. i2mo. Cloth. Price, $ 2.00. 

This volume, “Imaginary Conversations” (5 vols.), and “Pericles and 
Aspasia ” (1 voh), comprise Landor’s entire prose writings. 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES 

On the Golden Texts of The International Lessons of 1889. First 
Half, January-June. By Rev. Edward E. Hale. i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, $> 1 . 00 . 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES 

On the Golden Texts of the International Lessons of 1889. Second 
Half, July-December. By Rev. Edward E. Hale. i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, $ 1.00. 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN 

On the Golden Texts of the International Lessons of 1889. July- 
December. By Miss Lucretia P. Hale and Mrs. Bernard Whit¬ 
man. One volume. Square i6mo. Cloth. Price, #1.00. 

“ The publishers of this volume issued in January a collection of twenty-six 
stories founded upon the texts of the International Course for the first six months of 
this year. They will issue this month a series of twenty-six stories corresponding; 
to the lessons of the last six months of the year. These stories are written by what 
in the Wadsworth Clubs we call a ‘Ten,’ — several of them by myself, and the 
others by my sisters, my children, and by Mrs. Bernard Whitman, the Secretary 
of the Ten Times One orders. It is pleasant to acknowledge the interest and 
favor with which the collection already published has been received by teachers 
of Sunday-schools. But it had scarcely appeared before we received an earnest 
appeal from all quarters that we would attempt the preparation of another series, 
intended for the younger children; they make so large a part of every Sunday- 
school that whatever helps them or their teachers helps forward the whole. I 
felt at once some surprise that the general wish for such a collection had not been 
sooner acknowledged and provided for. I therefore urged Mrs. Whitman and 
my sister Lucretia to undertake at once the compilation of a volume which should 
meet the purposes of the younger classes in all our Sunday-schools, as they 
engaged in the study of the International texts for this year. They have under¬ 
taken this very pleasant office, and the reader has in hand the stories which they 
have provided for the little people. 

“ It is published at the same time with the collection for older boys and girls, 
which, as before, was written by what I am tempted to call my own ‘ 1 en.’ Both 
of them are published with our best hopes and prayers for the welfare of the 
young people for whom they are written.”— Edward E. Haie. 

ROGER BERKELEY’S PROBATION. 

A Story. By Helen Campbell, author of “Prisoners of Poverty,” 
“ Miss Melinda’s Opportunity,” “Mrs. Herndon’s Income,” “The What- 
to-do Club.” i2mo. Cloth. Price, $ 1 .00 ; paper covers, 50 cents. 

“ It is one of those stories that always appeal to the sympathies, and will find 
a large circle of readers among those who still believe in the courage, gratitude, 
and fidelity of man. The tale is well conceived and prettily set in an old- 
fashioned country house, the characters are in the main well drawn, and the 
climax very effective. The author’s style is bright and lively, and though the 
materials she has used are not new, they are most pleasantly modelled to suit 
her ends.” — Commonwealth. 


7 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications . 


PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. 

By Helen Campbell, author of “Prisoners of Poverty,” “The 
What-to-do Club,” etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $ 1 . 00 ; paper covers, 50 
cents. 

“ It is a noble work that Helen Campbell is doing in exposing the social 
conditions against which working-women are striving in order to live respectably 
and happily, as they have the natural right to live. Imagination has no part in 
her description of their lot; but experience in acquaintance with them in their 
labor cumulates fact upon fact to make description vivid and forceful to social 
conscience. And whether women are laborers of the United States, England, 
France, or Germany, as pictured in her new book(‘ Prisoners of Poverty Abroad ’), 
they are largely indebted to her for their advance to recognition with workmen 
as contestants for readjustment of the relations of capital and labor. The new 
book is quite as serious and appealing as the other, and shows about the same 
privation in conditions and inequalities in wages.” — Boston Globe. 

A RAMBLING STORY. 

By Mary Cowden Clarke. A new edition. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 
#1.00; paper covers, 50 cents. 

“ In ‘ A Rambling Story’ Mary Cowden Clarke, whose more serious Shake¬ 
spearian studies have made her name pleasantly and honorably known to students, 
tells a romantic tale of art, love, adventure, and travel. . . . The story has for 
its heroes and heroines, principal and subordinate, true, high-hearted, romantic 
characters, and is simply, pleasantly, and at times delightfully told, and abounds 
in word-picturing and phrasing and romantic incidents.” — Chicago Tribune. 

A WOODLAND WOOING. 

A Story. By Eleanor Putnam. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 

“ The reader must be dull indeed who could not be won from his summer 
drowsiness by enjoyment of the breeziness and cheeriness, the unforced brightness 
and charming originality of this, the most amusing ‘ summer novel ’ which has up 
to date found its way to our table. Its pages breathe of youth and summer 
w’eather, of clover-fields and mountain brooks. One is quickened with a sense of 
something near and sweet and wholesome in its pleasant company. It is the 
story of a summer’s ‘ camping-out,’ told in alternate chapters by a brother and 
sister, of the frank, jolly, rather ‘picklesome ’ sort.” — Exchange. 

COUNTER-CURRENTS. 

A Story. By the author of “Justina.” i6mo. Cloth. Price, 75 
cents. 

“‘Counter-Currents,’ by the anonymous author of ‘Justina’ is well worth 
being read, and attentively. It is a sweet, uplifting story, with vigorously drawn 
characters and scenes, — indeed it is occasionally truly dramatic, — and wath many 
blendings of tender feeling and delicate analysis. Moreover, without seeming to 
aim to do so unduly, it teaches several most important practical lessons in an 
unmistakable manner.”— Congregatiofialist. 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S COMPLETE WORKS. 

From the text of the Rev. Alexander Dyce’s second edition. With 
Portrait, Memoir, and Glossary. A cheap edition. 7 vols. i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, £5.25. 

The “Alexander Dyce” edition of Shakespeare’s plays and poems is pre¬ 
sumedly one of the most accurate among the many editions which have been 
published. The interpretation of the text has the indorsement of our best 
scholars, both in England and America. The edition is issued in small, handy 
volumes, compact and durably bound, and contains a glossary. 


o 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers’ Publications. 


THE TRUTH ABOUT CLEMENT KER. 

A Novel. By George Fleming, author of “Kismet,” “Mirage,” 
“ Head of Medusa,” etc. 161110. Price, 75 cents. 

“Under the name of ‘George Fleming,’ Miss Julia Fletcher has for more 
than a decade been ministering to the pleasure of readers of the better sort of 
fiction ; but we do not remember that in all that period she lias produced a more 
thoroughly original and artistic novel than ‘The Truth about Clement Ker.’ 
From the literary point of view Miss Fletcher’s work has always been of a rare 
and charming quality. Her style is nervous, graceful, impressive, strong. . . . 
The plot is admirably managed. Nothing could surpass the skill with which the 
interest is slowly brought to centre upon the hidden chamber in the ruins, and 
the haunting terror of the closing chapters is something to be remembered. 
Here again the author enforces the artistic creed of nothing too much. 1 he 
mystery remains a mystery to the last, or at any rate is only to be solved by the 
reader’s ingenuity.” — Boston Beacon. 


ROMANCES OF REAL LIFE. 

First and Second Series (sold separately). Selected and annotated by 
Leigh Hunt, author of “The Book of the Sonnet,” “ the Seer, ’ “A 
Day by the Fire,” etc. 2 vols. i6mo. Price, 75 cents each. 

Crimes, virtues, humors, plots, agonies, heroical sacrifices, mysteries of the 
most extraordinary description, though taking place in the most ordinary walks 
of life are the staple commodity of this book; all true, and over the greater 
portion of them hangs the greatest of all interests—domestic interest. 


FRENCH AND ENGLISH. 

A Comparison. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. One volume. 
121110. Cloth. Price, #2.00. 

“ Mr. Hamerton’s comparison of the two nations follows a very methodical 
order. He compares them, step by step, in reference to education, patriotism, 
politics, religion, virtues, customs, and society. The chapters on the virtues 
which are philosophically classified under the heads of truth, justice, purity, tem¬ 
perance, thrift, cleanliness, and courage — abound in suggestive observations. 
— A cade my. 


INSIDE OUR GATE. 

A Story. By Mrs. Christine C. Brush. Author of “The Colo¬ 
nel’s Opera Cloak,” in the “ No Name Series.” i6mo. Cloth. Price, 


$>i.oo. 

“One of the most amusing stories of the season is ‘Inside our Gate, by 
Christine Chaplin Brush, the author of the ‘ Colonel s Opera Cloak, a book 
which achieved a great popular success several years ago. In her new book the 
writer has sustained her reputation, and gives us reproductions of quaint charac¬ 
ters met with in household experiences that are full of an entertaining truthfulness 
to l.fe. Swedish, Scotch, Irish, and rustic American pecuhanties are brought 
forward in this volume with a realism that shows the author has carefuHy studied 
the subjects chosen for illustration. The young or old matron who has been 
obliged to haunt intelligence-offices in search of servants will find m these pages 
matter highly suggestive of her own trials and tribulations, set forth in a bright 
™id piquant manner that will make very spicy reading in the hours that can be 
spared from domestic duties.” — Saturday Evening Gazette. 


THE STORY OF REALMAH. 

By Sir Arthur Helps, author of “Friends in Council,” “Casimir 
Maremma,” etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents. 

9 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


CASIMIR MAREMMA. 

A Story. By Sir Arthur Helps, author of “Friends in Council,” ,, 
“The Story of Realmah,” etc. First American edition. i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, 75 cents. 

BY LEAFY WAYS. 

Brief Studies in the Book of Nature. By F. A. Knight. With nu¬ 
merous beautiful illustrations by E. T. Compton. i2mo. Cloth. Price, 
$2.00. 

“ The author leads us through all the varying year in a series of delightful 
chapters. It is hard to single out one as superior to another. His diction has a 
character of its own. So ingeniously does he blend what he has seen with what 
he has read, and all in such an original manner, that one feels one’s self in 
the presence of a new master. He transmutes the spirit of the country into the 
language of the town in a way which appeals alike to the naturalist and to the 
man of letters. His very table of contents is enough to make a Londoner long 
for another holiday.” — London Academy. 

THE LITTLE PILGRIM: Further Experiences. 

On the Dark Mountains. The Land ot Darkness. i6mo. Cloth, limp. 
Price, 60 cents. 

This volume is uniform with our edition of “ A Little Pilgrim,” and is a 
continuation of that book. 

STORIES OF THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 

By Mrs. Margaret O. W. Oliphant. Including the four books 
hitherto published anonymously, viz : “ A Little Pilgrim : In the Unseen ; ” 
“The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences, etc.; ” “Old Lady Mary, a 
Story of the Seen and the Unseen ; ” “ The Open Door. — The Portrait: 
Two Stories of the Seen and the Unseen.” In one volume. i6mo. 
Cloth. Price, $1.25. 

WITH SA’DI IN THE GARDEN; 

Or, The Book of Love. Being the “ Ishk ” or third chapter of the 
“Bostan ” of the Persian poet Sa’di, embodied in a dialogue held in the 
garden of the Taj Mahal, at Agra. By Sir Edwin Arnold, M.A., 
K.C.I.E., C.S.I. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Uniform with “The 
Light of Asia,” “ Pearls of the Faith,” etc. Price, #1.00. 

With Sa’di in the Garden,’ by Sir Edwin Arnold, continues the service of 
making English readers acquainted with the classical poetry of the East, in which 
the author has been so long and so successfully engaged. This is in most respects 
the most interesting contribution Sir Edwin has given. It is a more connected 
story, and its motive is clearer than in his other translations and paraphrases. 
The poems from Sa’di abound in rare beauty of thought and fancy, and are 
delightful independently of the text in which they are embedded. The wonder¬ 
fully flexible, idiomatic, and strong and chaste English of Sir Edwin Arnold has 
a special charm of its own; and his command over English diction has been 
nowhere shown by him with greater fulness, brilliancy, and force than in this 
volume, which appeals strongly to every finely cultivated taste and every lover of 
poetry in its finest and truest essence.” —Saturday livening Gazette. 

TO 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers ’ Publications. 


THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR EDWIN ARNOLD. 

2 vols. i2mo. Cloth, gilt. Price, #4.00. 

This edition includes all of the Poetical Works previously published in eight 
volumes, thus condensing them into a portable and permanent form. 


ETHICAL RELIGION. 

By William Mackintire Salter, nmo. Cloth. Price, #1.50. 

“ It should be read bv all who wish to know the real spirit and purpose of 
the ethical movement. It'is a valuable addition to the movement, one of the best 
fruits it has yet produced. The book does not pretend to be a philosophical 
treatise ; its purpose is purely practical and moral.. The moral purpose that holds 
ethical societies together and animates their work is here strongly and beautifully 
presented. Kvery page is a call to the higher life. The gospel of the supiemacy 
of ethics is nobly vindicated.” — Ethical Record. 


MISS EYRE FROM BOSTON, AND OTHERS. 

By Louise Chandler Moulton. One volume. i6mo. Cloth, 
Price, ^1.25; paper covers, 50 cents. 

“Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton’s stories are always certain to be worth 
reading; for the author understands human nature thoroughly, she has the gift 
of devising original motives, her style is piquant, and her satire almost uncon¬ 
scious in its felicity. ‘ Miss Eyre from Boston ’ is a book that all gently-nurtured, 
good-hearted girls ought to delight in reading.” — The Beacon. 


IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS. 

Lyrics and Sonnets. By Louise Chandler Moulton. Author of 
“Poem by L. C. M.” “Random Rambles,” “Miss Eyre from Boston,” 
etc. i6mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price, $1.50. 


CIIATA AND CHINITA. 

A Story. By Mrs. Louise Palmer Heaven. Uniform in style 
with “Ramona.” One volume. i2mo. Cloth. Price, #1.50. 


“ The local color is novel, the plot striking, and the character-sketches are 
vivid Even if the reader be averse to stories of adventure, he will find lus 
interest captured here at the start, and proceed breathlessly to the end of Chata 
and Chinita.’ . . . The reader’s interest is sustained throughout the book, and 
the narrative, from beginning to end, is both picturesque and absorbing. Un¬ 
doubtedly there are too many characters introduced into the story, and sometimes 
the reader is fairly bewildered by the rapid succession of exciting events; but in 
making the criticism we must remember that the writer’s aim has been to give us 
a living picture of a glowing period of Mexican life, —to write, in fact, that o,d- 
la-hioned article known as a romance. That she has accomplished this difficult 
task brilliantly, no one can deny. Few readers who once take up her fascinating 
ta e of love and adventure will lay it down without finishing it. Chata and 
Chinita’ is in many ways a remarkable novel.” Boston 1 ranscnpt. 


BELIEF. 

By George L. Chaney. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 

A series of discourses under the several headings of Man, God, Christ 
Heaven Hell etc the object of which is to find some basts of truth and reality 
", ihih"o ptanl thlfc^if active charity, and where a gemnne cUvouon may 
kneel without superstition or fear. 


11 




Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 


A FEW MORE VERSES. 

By Susan Coolidge. One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $>i.oo. 
An entirely new collection, and companion to the first volume, “ Verses 
by S. C.,” of which the “New Haven Palladium” says: 

“‘Verses,’ a modest name for a casket of gems, a collection of rare and 
beautiful literary pearls.” 

A MODERN MEPHISTOPHELES. 

By Louisa M. Alcott, author of “Little Women.” One volume. 
i6mo. Cloth. Price, #1.50. 

“A Modern Mephistopheles ” was written by Miss Alcott for the “No 
Name Series” of novels, and is now for the first time published with her name as 
its author. In this volume is included a new story (60 pp.), never before printed, 
entitled “ A Whisper in the Dark.” 

LOUISA M. ALCOTT: 

Her Life, Letters, and Journals. Edited by Ednah D. Cheney. 
With portraits and view of the Alcott Home in Concord. One volume. 
i6mo. Uniform with “ Little Women.” Price, $1.50. 

Mrs. Cheney has allowed this popular author to tell the story of her early 
struggles, her successes, and prosperity and life-work, in her own inimitable 
style, gracefully weaving the daily record of this sweet and useful life into a gar¬ 
land of immortelles in a manner at once pleasing and within the comprehension of 
the thousands of readers and admirers of Miss Alcott's books. It might truly be 
called the biography of “ Little Women.” 

The volume is enriched by the addition of two new portraits of Miss Alcott, 
one taken at the time she went into the service of her country as a hospital nurse, 
the other when she was in the full maturity of her popular career. 

I 

PORTFOLIO PAPERS. 

By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. With a portrait of the author, 
etched from the life, by Henri Manesse. i2mo. Cloth. Price, £2.00. 

“ Portfolio Papers consists of numerous short biographies and essays selected 
from his admirable art periodical by their author, in the belief that they were of 
permanent interest and worth collection in handier form than that in which they 
were originally given to the public. They include biographies of Constable, Etty, 
Chintreuil, Adrien, Guignet and Goya; a series of ‘ Notes on Aesthetics,’ essays 
on ‘Style,’ ‘Soul and Matter in the Fine Arts,’ ‘The Nature of Fine Arts,’ 
and ‘Can Science Help Art?’ and five ‘Conversations on Book Illustration,’ 
the whole forming a delightful volume, to be read w'ith pleasure by all people 
of cultivated taste. To dwell upon the grace, the pithiness, and the polish of 
Mr. Hamerton’s literary style is not necessary at this late, date, and it would be 
equally cuperfluous to emphasize the authority and the taste with which he writes 
about art.. This book, which is prefaced by an etched portrait of the author, is 
abundant in that charm and that edifying comment that make Mr. Hamerton 
one of the most attractive and satisfying of art critics to read.”— Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 


12 



BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 1890 


THE BAGPIPERS. By George Sand. Translated by Miss 
Wormeley. One volume. i2mo. Half Russia. Uniform 
with Balzac’s Works. Price, $1.50. 


It is too late to cavil at George Sand as a literary artist. Her rank among the 
creat writers of fiction is assured and permanent. At her best, she towers 
immeasurably above most of her French contemporaries, and in her special 
Quality of art is only rivalled abroad by George Eliot, widely diverging though the 
two writers may be in their views of life. “ The Bagpipers ” is a charming book, 
masterly in its delineation of character and keenly interesting in its philosophy. 
Grace delicacy, and refinement of style are mingled in it with power, thought, 
and world-knowledge, and the passions are depicted with the hand of a master. 
The translator has done her work with exceptional skill, with, perhaps, even closer 
fidelity to the spirit of her original than she achieved in her Balzac translations. 
The volumes are printed and bound uniform in size and style with Balzac s 
Works, and can scarcely fail to win as large favor as attended the latter. 


ALBRECHT. A Story by Arlo Bates, author of “A Lad’s 
Love,” “ Berries of the Brier,” etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 

$1.00. 

The scene of this story is laid in the Black Forest in the time of Charlemagne 
(the ninth century), the age of knights and castles. It is a metaphysical romance 
in which love plays a leading part, and abounds in tender sentiment and picturesque 
description The story opens with a vivid picture of the Black Forest, which is 
compared to a vast sea in its external characteristics and in the strange beings that 

.people it. 


SONS OF THE SOIL. By Honors de Balzac. Translated 
by Katherine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. Bound in half 
Russia. Price, $1.5°* 


Another volume of Balzac has a timely interest from the prominence of the 
subject before the public. This is “ Les Paysans,” which is rendered m English 
“ Sons of the Soil.” It is a story of the land question in France, and appeals to 
that sense of the inequality of conditions as illustrated by the tenure of this sort 
of property which is excited by writers on the same class of subjects in this country 
to-dav. The motto of the first chapter aptly suggests the trend of this powerful 
story:' “Whoso land hath, contention hath.” 


*3 



Books Published in 1890 , 


THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS. A Tale of the House- 
of the Wolfings and all the Kindreds of the Mark, written 
in Prose and in Verse, by William Morris, author of “The 
Earthly Paradise.” Edition de Luxe. Limited to five hun¬ 
dred copies. Bound in antique style. Crown 8vo. Price, 
$ 3 - 00 * 

This is one of those rare creations .of genius which reproduce the life and 
manners of a remote past and of peoples of a grand kind that civilization cannot 
assimilate. They live in the stories of their deeds; and whether these are 
recorded in veritable sagas, or are told by some writer of an alien race and of later 
times, their power over the mind is due to their adequate expression of the 
thoughts, experiences, and emotions of a by-gone people. And while the modern 
narrator lacks the control over the feelings which an ancient chronicler exerts, he 
may, by the exercise of his imagination and the charm of his literary art, give a 
peculiar attractiveness to his work. This is what William Morris has done in 
“The House of the Wolfings,” which is especially remarkable for its essentially 
poetic character, although it is written in both prose and poetry. It is this vital 
element of power underlying the form of composition which gives the book its 
hold on critical appreciation. 

The story of the Wolfings, a branch of the Gothic people, in their picturesque 
life in the woods and their struggle with the Romans, has an epic force and signifi¬ 
cance ; and the way in which Thiodolf, their leader and that of their brother 
Mark-men, was led to sacrifice his own life in order to insure the success of his 
people, has a noble pathos. He had been induced by the Wood-Sun, a daughter 
of the god who was smitten with love for him, to wear a magic hauberk, or coat of 
mail, w'hich he threw off on discovering that, while it was a sure protection for him, 
it would bring ruin on his folk. This was being proved by the success of the 
Romans, who had captured the sacred Wolfing Roof, when the Hall-Sun, the 
child of the two lovers, resolving to sacrifice her beloved father for his country, 
led him to her mother, whom she made confess the deception which she had prac¬ 
tised to save Thiodolf’s life. That warrior, roused by the emergency, marched 
with his hosts to the Wolfing Roof, which he recaptured from the Romans, and 
died from his wounds in the great hall. His death saved his people. 


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